A  THEORY  OF   MOTIVES,  IDEALS,  AND 
VALUES  IN  EDUCATION 


A  THEORY  OF  MOTIVES 

IDEALS  AND  VALUES 

IN  EDUCATION 


BY 

WILLIAM   ESTABROOK   CHANCELLOR 

Superintendent  of  Public  Instruction,  District  of  Columbia  ;  Lecturer 

on  History  of  Educational   Theory,  Johns  Hopkins  University; 

Lecturer  on  Education,  George  Washington  University  ; 

Author,  "  Our  Schools :   Their  Administration 

and  Supervision  ;  "  etc. 


"  There  is  no  darkness  but  ignorance." 

SHAKESPEARE,  Twelfth  Night 
Act  IV,  Sc.  ii 


BOSTON   AND    NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 
press,  Cambridge 
1907 


COPYRIGHT    1907   BY   WILLIAM   K.   CHANCELLOR 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 


PREFACE 

IN  this  book  I  have  undertaken  that  most  difficult  of  all 
intellectual  tasks,  —  to  determine  the  values  of  the  activ- 
ities and  of  the  ideals  of  men.  In  this  task,  many  men 
engage  themselves  more  or  less  seriously ;  poets,  philo- 
sophers, statesmen,  historians,  men  of  affairs,  gossips, 
cynics,  idlers ;  and  all  fail.  Yet  no  critic  is  competent  to 
measure  the  extent  of  their  failures.  If,  however,  the 
practical  educator  would  lift  his  own  work  out  of  empir- 
icism and  traditionalism  into  the  freedom  and  reason- 
ableness of  philosophy,  he  must  undertake  this  task. 

The  immediate  influences  upon  me  have  been  of  two 
kinds :  the  practical  experiences  of  a  working  superin- 
tendent and  the  academic  associations  of  a  university 
lecturer.  The  true  substratum,  the  bedrock  of  the  book 
is  not  science  or  art,  but  a  faith  that  seems  to  me  war- 
ranted by  history  as  well  as  by  philosophy  and  necessi- 
tated by  the  nature  of  the  human  mind,  —  that  this  life 
is,  to  use  the  frequent  phrase  of  Carlyle,  "but  a  little 
gleam  between  two  eternities."  I  am  well  aware  of  the 
place  of  this  opinion  in  the  history  of  philosophy.  But 
only  such  an  opinion,  true  or  false,  it  seems  to  me,  can 
justify  true  seriousness  of  thought  or  of  conduct  in  life. 
It  warrants  the  saying  of  Emerson,  "  I  am  to  see  to  it 
that  the  world  is  better  for  me,  and  to  find  my  reward 
in  the  act,"  —  my  reward  being  the  irreversible  educa- 
tion of  an  eternal  soul.1  I  cannot  accept  the  opinion  of 
Matthew  Arnold, 

"  Hath  man  no  second  life  ? 
Pitch  this  one  high  ;  "  2 

for  the  conclusion  seems  a  non  sequitur  from  the  pre- 
mise, and  the  premise  itself  false.  I  hold  life  one. 

Obviously  in  every  progressive  age  there  must  be  a 

1  Man,  the  Reformer.  2  Poems,  "  Anti-Desperation." 


vi  PREFACE 

"  new  education,"  for  the  progress  of  humanity  is  con- 
ditioned by  the  better  development  of  the  new  generation. 
A  static  education  is  both  cause  and  effect  of  a  static 
civilization.  I  use  these  terms  very  loosely,  for  it  may 
fairly  be  questioned  whether  education  is  not  in  its  very 
nature  dynamic,  and  whether  a  civilization  must  not  al- 
ways be  either  progressive  or  decadent ;  but  as  thus  used 
the  terms  deliver  my  meaning.  Nothing  can  be  more 
false  than  the  notion  that  a  civilization  may  advance 
while  its  educational  phase  remains  in  statu  quo.  Yet 
this  false  notion  is  the  very  substance  of  most  of  the 
opposition,  whether  popular  or  professional,  to  "the  new 
education." 

It  becomes,  therefore,  a  part  of  my  obligation  to  dis- 
cuss civilization,  success,  education,  and  progress,  for 
until  the  terms  are  defined,  neither  agreement  nor  con- 
clusion, neither  satisfaction  nor  enlightenment  is  possi- 
ble. I  must,  of  course,  take  for  granted  certain  matters, 
for  education  is  not  a  basic  science,  but  rather  one  that 
utilizes  as  its  own  postulates  the  conclusions  of  other 
sciences.  Indeed,  by  some,  the  proposition  that  educa- 
tion is  a  science  is  challenged.  In  this  book,  I  do  not 
discuss  these  postulates,  though  I  state  and,  in  some 
instances,  illustrate  them. 

The  philosophy  of  education  is  not  quite  synonymous 
with  the  science  of  teaching,  and  the  profession  of  edu- 
cation is  not  at  all  coterminous  with  the  art.  Teaching 
is  artistic  ;  education  architectural,  architectonic.  From 
want  of  this  distinction,  there  have  been  confusion  and 
conflict.  This  distinction  I  draw,  following  it  with  various 
conclusions  and  applications  that  appear  pertinent  to  the 
needs  and  conditions  of  this  American  democracy. 

The  references  will,  I  trust,  sufficiently  display  my 
obligations  to  those  who  have  gone  before  me.  Many 
principles  and  notions  here  repeated  seem  to  be  too  much 
the  general  property  of  mankind  to  justify  mention  of 


PREFACE  vii 

their  last  or  most  elaborate  account ;  and  some  have  come 
to  me  in  periodicals  or  in  conversation  in  such  fashion 
that  I  am  unable  to  identify  their  sources.  As  far  as 
possible,  I  have  avoided  topics  treated  by  myself  in  other 
books  ;  but  where  an  argument  has  seemed  essential  to 
my  theory,  I  have  not  hesitated  to  repeat  at  least  the 
outline. 

From  what  I  know  of  educational  theory  and  practice, 
it  seems  that  this  book  has  five  features  of  significance : 

1.  The  assertion  of  the   universal   rather  than  the 
mediate  place  and  value  of  education,  as  an  integral  social 
institution. 

2.  The  presentation   in   a  hierarchical  form  of  the 
evidences  of  education  as  its  successively  higher  ideals. 

3.  The  discovery  of  the  true   relations  of  motives, 
values,  and  ideals  by  arranging  these  terms  logically. 

4.  The  emphasis  of  the  philosophic  spirit  underlying 
and  establishing  the  modern  course  of  study  and  mode 
of  administration. 

5.  The  development  of  a  system  based  upon  the  pro- 
position of  the  necessity  of  the  complete  education  of 
each  and  of  all. 

I  have  sought  not  to  substantiate,  but  to  demonstrate 
these  principles  and  their  corollaries.  I  believe  not  that 
these  should  be  the  principles  of  education,  but  that  they 
are  the  principles,  for  I  look  upon  education  as  a  science 
whose  truths  are  certain  to  be  discovered  by  observation, 
experimentation,  and  verification.  Of  course,  if  these 
simple  principles  are  the  real  truth,  then  we  can  construct 
scientifically  and  easily  the  appropriate  machinery  of 
educational  practice,  redeem  the  schools  from  their  pre- 
sent overloading,  confusion,  and  routinism,  and  restore 
education  to  its  purpose,  which  is  to  educate  men  and 
women.  True  education  is  indifferent  as  to  what  particu- 
lar things  its  graduates  know,  but  sensitive  in  every 
fibre  to  what  they  are  and  can  do. 


CONTENTS 

PART   ONE.     EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 
CHAPTER  I 

THE   NATURE   OF   EDUCATION 

Educational  theory  must  precede  educational  practice  —  The 
duality  of  man  —  The  individual  paramount  to  the  race  — 
Development  of  the  soul  —  The  leisure  class  —  Society  and 
solitude  —  Recapitulation  theory — Order,  the  manner  of  edu- 
cation   3 

CHAPTER   II 

VALUES   OF   THE    SOCIAL    INSTITUTIONS 

Property  —  The  Family  —  The  Church  —  The  State  —  The  School 

—  Culture — Business  —  War 31 

CHAPTER   III 

CIVILIZATION   AND   EDUCATION 

Mechanical  processes  of  civilization  —  Its  quality  depends  upon 
its  morality  —  Morals  :  social,  popular,  historical,  national,  com- 
parative, ideal  —  Morals  and  ethics  —  Educability  unaffected 
by  physique,  race,  sex,  or  time  —  Growth  of  the  race  in  know- 
ledge—  Individual  and  race  culture  —  Good  and  bad  education  52 

CHAPTER   IV 

PERSONAL   SUCCESS   AND   FAILURE    IN   LIFE 

Success  not  always  a  matter  of  the  entire  life  or  of  general  accom- 
plishment —  Personal  weaknesses  often  forgiven  to  the  great 

—  Success  not  always  recognized  at  the  time  —  Our  failures  in 
matters  of  property,  religion,  domestic  life,  government  —  Tests 

of  success  and  failure 70 


x  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   V 

EDUCATION    IN    RELATION    TO    PUBLIC   AND    PRIVATE    MORALITY   AND 
TO   SOCIAL  AND   PERSONAL   PROGRESS 

Source  and  growth  of  new  truth  —  Assimilation  of  ideas  —  Hu- 
man and  social  characteristics  —  Dependence  of  civilization 
upon  education  —  Fundamental  laws  of  population  —  Duty  of 
education  toward  the  classes  and  the  masses 82 

CHAPTER   VI 

THE   FAILURE   OF   EDUCATION 

Social  motives  in  organizing  education  —  Social  causes  for  the 
failure  of  education  —  Education  toward  ends  unwarranted  — 
Personal  causes  for  the  failure  of  education 97 

PART   TWO.     THE   MACHINERY  OF  EDUCATION 
CHAPTER  VII 

THE   PRESENT  SUBORDINATION   AND   DEPENDENCE   OF   THE   SCHOOL 

The  school  of  education  and  of  training  —  Subordination  and 
morality  —  Dependence  upon  Property  —  Upon  the  Family  — 
Upon  the  Church  —  Upon  Culture  —  Upon  the  State  .  .  .  .  115 

CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   NEW   EDUCATION 

Mechanism  of  education  —  Bases  of  education  as  a  science  —  Psy-  • 
chology  —  Criminology  —  Political  Economy  —  The  progressive 
stages  of  education 138 

CHAPTER   IX 

THE   FORMAL   SYSTEM   OF  EDUCATION 

Parents  should  compose  most  of  the  educational  profession  —  Pe- 
riod of  compulsory  education  —  Varied  materials  of  education 
—  Individual  needs 164 

CHAPTER  X 

LEGISLATION,    ADMINISTRATION,    SUPERVISION,    AND    INSTRUCTION    AS 
EDUCATIONAL    INSTRUMENTS 

Legislation  by  constitutional  conventions  —  Legislatures  and 
Boards  of  Education  —  State  interference  with  private  schools 


CONTENTS  xl 

—  State  centralization  and  local  autonomy  —  National  control 

—  Purpose  of  supervision  —  Characteristics  of  poor  instruction     180 


PART   THREE.    THE   EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 
CHAPTER    XI 

INTELLIGENCE 

The  senses  —  Processes  of  observation  —  Literacy  —  Language  — 
Literacy  and  efficiency  —  Literacy  and  morality — Phonics  — 
Polyglottism  —  Grammar — Definition 203 

CHAPTER   XII 

EFFICIENCY 

Activity  beyond  knowledge  —  Health  and  efficiency  —  Efficiency 
and  property  —  Economic  inactivity  in  the  home  —  Efficiency 
and  the  Church  —  Efficiency  and  government  —  Efficiency  and 
the  arts  —  Efficiency  in  education  —  Economic  efficiency  —  Ef- 
ficiency and  war 243 

CHAPTER   XIII 

MORALITY 

Physical  laws  of  morality —  Moral  laws  of  Property  —  Of  the-Fam- 
ily — Of  the  Church  —  Of  the  State  —  Of  the  School  —  Of  Cul- 
ture—  Of  Occupation  —  Of  Business  —  Of  general  Society  .  274 

PART   FOUR.     THE   EVIDENCES   OF  CULTURE 
CHAPTER  XIV 

SCIENCE 

The  scientific  method  —  Superstitions  —  The  search  for  truth  in 
Nature  —  God  in  Nature  —  Science  and  Philosophy  .  .  .  .  317 

CHAPTER    XV 

ART 

Multiplicity  of  the  arts  —  Tyranny  of  art  —  Artists  and  artisans 
—  Art  and  education  —  Democracy  of  art  —  The  technique  of 
art 328 


rii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   XVI 

PHILOSOPHY 

Individual  philosophy  —  Historical  philosophy  —  Differentiation 
of  other  sciences  from  philosophy  —  Dangers  of  philosophy  to 
the  inexperienced  —  Functionings  of  knowledge  —  Instinct  .  .  341 

CHAPTER   XVII 

HEALTH   AND   HOLINESS 

Efforts  of  Nature  in  behalf  of  health  —  Civilization  inimical  to 
health  —  Heredity,  environment,  and  health  —  Health  and  occu- 
pation —  Age  and  holiness  .............  359 


PART   FIVE.     MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCA- 
TIONAL   PRACTICE 

CHAPTER  XVIII 

HABIT,   CHANGE,  AND    ILLUSIONS   OF  CHANGE 

Habits  of  individuals  —  Habits  of  communities  —  Habits  of  social 
institutions  —  Conservatism  of  the  School  ........    373 


Subjects  tending  to  train  the  powers  of  observation  —  Training  in 
efficiency —  Training  in  morality  —  Language  —  Mathematics 
—  History  —  Science  —  Art  —  The  art  of  health 383 

CHAPTER   XX 

CONSTANTS,  ELECTIVES,    PROGRAMMES   AND   COURSES 

Play — Nature-study —  Language  —  Music  —  Drawing  —  Arithme- 
tic —  History  —  Electives  —  Order  of  studies  —  Arrangement 
of  a  curriculum 423 

CHAPTER   XXI 

RIGHTS   AND   OBLIGATIONS   OF   SOCIETY   AND   EDUCATORS 

Responsibility  of  the  teacher  to  the  child  —  To  the  mother  of  the 
child  —  To  the  taxpayer  —  To  the  State  —  Increased  expendi- 
tures for  the  School  a  necessity 433 


CONTENTS  xiii 

CHAPTER  XXII 

THE   NATURAL   MAN 

Primary  and  secondary  motives  of  life —  City  life  —  Resistance  of 
humanity  to  culture —  Motives,  ideals,  and  principles  of  the  bar- 
barian —  The  warfare  of  civilization 442 

CHAPTER   XXIII 

THE  WELL-EDUCATED   MAN 

The  qualities  of  the  well-educated  man  —  His  acquirement  of  cul- 
ture   464 

CHAPTER   XXIV 

THE  LINE  OF   MARCH 

Method  of  growth  in  civilization  —  True  civilization  a  progress 
away  from  Nature  —  Evidences  of  a  true  civilization  ....  475 

CHAPTER   XXV 

THE   MEANING  OF  LIFE 

Common  attitude  toward  death  —  The  necessity  of  evil  —  Contin- 
uousness  of  the  School  —  Education  as  an  independent  social 
institution 486 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 499 

INDEX 519 


PART   ONE 
EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

The  difficulties  of  democracy  are  the  opportunities  of  educa- 
tion.—  BUTLER,   The  Meaning  of  Education,  p.  120. 


A  THEORY  OF 

MOTIVES,  IDEALS,  AND  VALUES 
IN   EDUCATION 

CHAPTER   I 

THE   NATURE   OF   EDUCATION 

Where  no  vision  is,'the  people  is  made  naked.  —  Proverbs  xxix,  18  (alternative  reading). 
And  whosoever  will,  let  him  take  the  water  of  life  freely.  — JOHN,  Revelation  xxii,  17. 

In  the  dialectic  of  personal  growth,  the  development  of  self-consciousness  proceeds  by  a 
two- fold  relation  of  give-and-take  between  the  individual  and  his  social  fellows.  .  .  .  Both 
ego  and  alter  are  thus  essentially  social ;  each  is  a  socius,  and  each  is  an  imitative  crea- 
tion.—  BALDWIN,  Mental  Development:  Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations,  pp.  513, 
519. 

To  educate  is  to  lead  forth,  to  guide  forward.  But 
what  is  to  be  led  or  guided  ?  And  from  whence  ?  In 
what  direction  is  forward  ?  Who  should  lead,  and  who 
be  led  ?  And  when  ?  By  what  means,  and  by  what 
methods  ?  These  questions  are  to  be  answered  by  edu- 
cational theory  before  the  answer  may  be  demonstrated 
in  educational  practice. 

In  the  familiar  illustration  of  the  Cave,1  Plato  represents 
men  as  "  living  in  a  kind  of  underground  den  that  has  an 
opening  toward  the  light.  Chained  so  that  they  cannot  turn 
their  heads,  they  see  only  their  shadows,  or  the  shadows  of 
one  another,  which  the  fire  above  and  behind  them  throws 
on  the  opposite  wall  of  the  cave."  Occasionally,  one  is 
freed  from  his  chains.  At  first,  such  an  one  does  not  know 
whether  the  shadows  or  the  other  men  themselves  are  real. 
When  this  one  goes  out  into  the  world,  the  sun,  moon,  stars, 
and  earth  astonish  him  ;  and  he  wonders  that  he  ever  could 
1  Plato,  The  Republic,  515. 


4  EDUCATION  AND   SOCIETY 

have  enjoyed  the  cave.  Should  he  return  thither,  the  cave- 
men will  despise  him  because,  with  the  loss  of  familiarity,  he 
will  have  lost  skill  in  the  ways  of  the  cave.  But  he  himself 
will  know  that  the  outer  world  is  the  true  world  and  will 
always  desire  to  dwell  there.  Such  is  an  interpretation  of  life 
that  education  may  derive  from  philosophy. 

Education  is  applicable  to  whosoever  is  educable.  To 
say  that  education  is  impossible  in  a  particular  instance 
is  to  say  that  the  creature  is  not  educable,  is  indocile, 
is  incapable  of  growth.  A  good  man  would  hesitate  to 
affirm  this  of  any  conscious  living  thing.  Of  any  hu- 
man being  not  educable,  he  speaks  with  sorrow,  using 
with  the  utmost  hesitation  such  terms  as  "feeble- 
minded," "imbecile,"  "idiot,"  and  "incorrigible,"  and 
trying  to  think  and  to  act  upon  the  theory  that  there  is 
no  absolute  idiocy.  A  complete  system  <  of  therapeutics 
has  been  built  upon  the  theory  that  even  the  insane 
may  be  redeemable  and  educable.  To  say,  as  some  do 
carelessly,  that  education  is  "finished,"  is  to  display 
ignorance  or  forgetfulness  of  the  nature  of  education. 

It  is  the  conscious  creature  alone  that  is  educable. 
The  stone  may  be  cut  and  carved  :  this  is  not  education. 
The  tree  may  be  transplanted,  grafted,  or-  bent :  none 
of  these  operations  is  education.  The  oyster  may  be 
improved  by  proper  planting  and  feeding ;  but  this  im- 
provement is  not  education.  Certain  insects,  however, 
may  be  educated.  In  many  instances,  birds,  beasts,  and 
fishes  have  been  educated  to  considerable  degrees  of 
larger  and  more  conscious  thought  and  action.  The 
higher,  the  stronger,  the  larger  the  conscious  life  of  a 
creature,  the  greater  is  its  educability.  In  the  case  of 
man,  the  educability  of  an  individual  seems  to  be  quite 
as  much  a  matter  of  the  skill  of  the  educator  as  of  the 
quality  of  the  pupil.  The  limit  of  the  education  of  a 
man  of  talents  seems  usually  to  be  rather  in  his  oppor- 


THE    NATURE    OF   EDUCATION  5 

tunities  than  in  himself.  The  genius  *  is  he  whose  edu- 
cation is  self-originated  and  transcends  the  quality  of 
his  instruction.  The  larger,  the  more  intense,  the  fuller, 
and  the  clearer  the  presentations  in  consciousness,  and 
the  vaster,  the  saner,  and  the  more  reliable  the  subcon- 
sciousness,  the  more  nearly  may  perfect  education  be  at- 
tained.2 It  is  true,  of  course,  that  the  finite  as  such  can 
never  be  perfectly  educated.  Individuality  sets  its  own 
limitations.  To  know  everything,  to  feel  everything,  to 
will  everything  ;  to  mirror  the  world  ;  to  represent  per- 
fection :  these  are  beyond  the  goals  of  the  finite  creature. 
To  run  well  the  race  of  the  mortal ;  this  is  enough.  God 
cannot  ask  the  mortal  to  return  more  than  He  gives 
him ;  but  so  much  as  He  has  given  God  may  ask.  And 
no  man  may  say  how  much  God  has  given. 

Of  mortal  man,  there  is  the  carnal,  and  there  is  the 
spiritual.  The  body  is  the  temple  of  the  soul.3  Spirit 
wars  with  flesh.4  The  spirit  indeed  is  willing,  but  the 
flesh  is  weak.5  In  respect  to  this  apparent  duality  of 
man,  the  purposes  of  education  are  to  make  the  body 
a  satisfactory,  that  is,  healthy,  obedient,  and  skillful, 
instrument  of  the  spirit ;  to  give  the  spirit  all  possible 
freedom  from  the  body,  its  functions,  duties,  needs, 
weaknesses,  lusts,  joys,  and  pains ; 8  to  keep  the  body 
alive  as  long  as  the  spirit  may  use  it  as  a  fair  habitation  ; 
and  to  release  the  spirit  from  the  body  undefiled  by  it 

1  Baldwin,  Mental  Development:  Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations^ 
chapter  v. 

2  Jastrow,  Psychology  of  the  Unconscious. 

3  i  Corinthians  vi,  19.    A  saying  of  Paul's. 

4  Galatians  v,  17.    A  teaching  of  Paul's. 

5  Matthew  xxvi,  41.    A  saying  of  Jesus'. 

6  "  Let  a  man  be  of  good  cheer  about  his  soul,  who  has  cast  away  the 
pleasures  and  ornaments  of  the  body  as  foreign  to  him,  and  has   fol- 
lowed after  the  pleasures  of  knowledge  in  this  life,  and  who  has  adorned 
the  soul  in  her  own  proper  jewels, — temperance  and  justice  and  cour- 
age and  nobility  and  truth."    Plato  (Socrates),  Phezdo. 


6  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

and  ready  and  eager  for  the  opportunities  of  the  life  to 
come.1 

Evidently,  then,  the  soul,  which  is  spirit  at  once  con- 
scious and  self-conscious,  is  to  be  educated,  and  the  body 
is  to  be  trained.  The  final  education  of  the  soul  is  its 
release  from  the  body.2  Mere  physical  growth  brings  the 
human  being  from  infancy  to  maturity ;  and  the  brain  of 
the  man  appears  to  be  a  better  instrument  for  his  soul 
than  was  the  brain  of  the  child.3  Such  growth  effects 
of  itself  a  partial  release  of  the  soul  from  the  body. 

For  reasons  inscrutable  to  man,  it  appears  that  the 
purpose  of  human  life  in  respect  to  the  spirit  is  to 
inform  it  by  giving  it  knowledge.  The  spirit  is  incar- 
nated and  thereby  becomes  soul.  A  soul,  then,  is  spirit, 
living  in  the  flesh  and  become  conscious  of  its  isolation 
from  other  spirit.  Incidentally,  the  purpose  of  education 
is  to  inform  the  soul  by  giving  it  systematic  experience. 
In  this  sense,  education  is  the  salvation  or  redemption 
of  the  soul,  which  is  its  restoration  to  pure  spirit.4 

1  "  Deliberate  and  foresee  the  end  :  examine  whether  passion  tend  to 
that  which  will  be  approvable  when  it  is  past.  The  sinful  passions  are 
blind  and  are  moved  only  by  things  present.  They  cannot  endure  the 
sight  of  the  time  to  come."  Coit,  after  Richard  Baxter,  Christian  Ethics, 
p.  261. 

3  "  He  has  outsoared  the  shadow  of  our  night. 

Envy  and  calumny  and  hate  and  pain, 
And  that  unrest  which  men  miscall  delight, 
Can  touch  him  not,  and  torture  not  again. 
From  the  contagion  of  the  world's  slow  stain 
He  is  secure." 

Shelley,  Adonais. 

3  The  educator  need  not  answer  in  terms  the  metaphysical  questions 
whether  the  soul  itself  grows,  whether  the  body  is  such  an  instrument 
as  actually  helps  the  growth  of  the  soul,  and  whether  the  body  condi- 
tions the  soul.    Strong,  Why  the  Mind  has  a  Body,  pp.  336-348. 

4  The   theological  and   religious   implications  of    this   principle   are 
obvious.     No  human  culture  has  neglected  to  consider  them.    See  Hall, 
Adolescence :  its  Psychology,  chapter  x,  for  the  history  of  the  soul.    Arnett, 
"The  Soul:  Past   and   Present  Belief s,"  Journal  of  Psychology,  April, 
July,  1904. 


THE    NATURE   OF   EDUCATION  7 

To  say  that  it  is  the  purpose  of  education  to  acquaint 
the  individual  with  Nature  and  human  society  is  to 
assign  as  a  purpose  what  is  philosophically  but  a  means 
or  at  best  a  method ;  or  else  to  assign  as  a  purpose  of 
education  what  is  really  but  a  purpose  of  instruction. 
These  propositions  must  be  true,  unless  we  conceive 
individual  man  as  ephemeral  and  man  the  race  or  human 
society  as  paramount.  Man,  the  physical  race,  is  de- 
monstrably  not  eternal  or  immortal.  It  is  inconceivable 
that  sun,  earth,  mankind  as  such  will  last  forever.  But  it 
is  not  inconceivable  that  the  individual  is  immortal  or 
eternal  or  that  one  may  achieve  immortality,  which  is  not 
necessarily  to  suppose  that,  retaining  personality,  one  may 
achieve  infinity,  universality,  eternity.  Shut  in,  there- 
fore, by  the  inexorable  logic  of  the  human  status,  to 
save  for  one's  self  the  ideal  of  the  worth  of  effort,  one 
must  regard  the  individual  as  of  greater  value  than  soci- 
ety or  the  race  itself.  This  brings  us  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  purpose  of  education  is  not  the  welfare  of 
humanity,  but  the  progress  of  the  individual.1  Fortu- 
nately for  the  cause  of  education,  considered  as  a  social 
institution,  this  apparently  metaphysical  conclusion  is 
sustained  by  common  sense,  for  a  society  composed 
wholly  of  fully  educated  individuals  would  be  ideal,  and  a 
society  blessed  by  the  activities  of  though  but  a  few 
nobly  educated  individuals  is  enlightened  by  a  quality  of 
genius  transcending  all  the  possibilities  of  any  quantity 
of  lesser  talents.  Entire  ages  and  nations,  all  the  world 
and  all  time,  glow  with  the  beauty  of  the  truth  seen  and 


1  To  achieve  eternal  life  is  an  ideal  not  less  broadening  than  that  to 
achieve  social  efficiency.  By  as  much  as  eternity  transcends  society,  and 
immortality  sociality,  by  so  much  does  the  individual  transcend  mankind. 
This  raises  without  answering  the  question  whether  body  and  soul  are 
not  both,  as  products  of  this  particular  universe,  and  as  conditions  of 
one  another,  incapable  of  being  related  in  thought  to  eternity  and  infinity 
as  expressed  in  any  other  universe. 


8  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

taught  by  Buddha,  Moses,  Confucius,  Socrates,  Jesus, 
Paul,  Augustine,  Dante,  Kant,  Emerson. 

"  Great  men  are  the  fire  pillars  in  this  dark  pilgrimage  of 
mankind :  they  stand  as  everlasting  witnesses  of  what  has 
been,  prophetic  tokens  of  what  still  may  be,  the  revealed, 
embodied  possibilities  of  human  nature." * 

The  soul  is  to  be  developed  out  of  the  ignorance, 
the  weakness,  and  the  errors  of  childhood  into  full  ma- 
turity, and  sustained  therein  till  freed  from  the  body 
by  death.  Its  development  is  outward,  a  revelation, 
a  disclosure,  an  expression.  But  as  the  soul  develops, 
it  infolds  knowledge,  ideals,  hopes,  gathered  out  of  the 
world.  The  larger  the  soul  grows,  the  more  it  includes. 
Its  sympathies  and  passions,  its  joys  and  griefs,  its  facts, 
laws,  values,  its  truths,  standards,  principles,  its  motives, 
desires,  purposes,  increase,  take  on  organization,  resolve 
themselves  with  every  new  experience.  The  outer  man 
grows  larger,  the  inner  man  more  full  and  perfect.2  He 
centres  himself  upon  conscience,  whose  still,  small  voice 
is  an  echo,  as  it  were,  of  the  voice  of  God  :  he  radiates 
into  the  universe  of  Nature,  and  there  likewise  finds 
God.3 

But  shall  the  child,  the  youth,  the  man,  educate  him- 
self ?  The  Maker  of  worlds  has  not  so  ordered  this 
world  and  this  humanity.  The  spirit  is  not  to  be  left  in 
its  confusion  alone  in  a  strange  body  upon  this  new 
earth  as  a  being  lost,  helpless,  unbefriended.  The  soul 

*  Goethe,  Schiller. 

3  "  Century  by  century  the  educating  process  of  the  social  life  has  been 
working  at  human  nature ;  it  has  built  itself  into  our  inmost  soul.  Con- 
science—  the  sense  of  right  and  wrong  —  springs  out  of  the  habit  of 
judging  things  from  the  point  of  view  of  all  and  not  of  one."  Clifford, 
Ethics  of  Religion,  Essays,  p.  383. 

8  "  The  voice  of  conscience  is  the  voice  of  our  Father  Man  who  is 
within  us  ;  the  accumulated  instinct  of  the  race  is  poured  into  each  one 
of  us,  and  overflows  us,  as  if  the  Ocean  were  poured  into  a  cup."  Clif- 
ford, Decline  of  Religious  Belief,  p.  391. 


THE    NATURE   OF   EDUCATION  9 

finds  itself  surrounded  by  other  and  older  souls,  lest  it 
die.1  The  entire  process  before  and  after  birth  is  a  pro- 
vision for  the  circumstancing,  supporting,  sheltering, 
nurturing,  and  befriending  of  the  soul.  And  never  was 
this  more  true  than  at  the  present  age  in  America,  for 
all  the  institutions  of  society  are  wrought  together  to 
protect  the  new  soul  in  its  adventures  in  this  strange 
world.  The  womb,  the  mother,  the  home,  the  church, 
the  school,  all  speak  one  truth.  We  prolong  infancy  for 
the  one  purpose  of  enriching  the  human  being.2  What- 
ever works  to  the  injury  of  the  child  from  conception 
to  maturity  is  contrary  to  the  design  of  Nature  and  of 
human  nature ;  and  appearances  to  the  contrary  not- 
withstanding, it  is  occasional  and  exceptional.  It  is  an 
evil  tending  to  destroy  humanity ;  and  to  this  time,  all 
evils,  however  many,  however  great,  have  been,  though 
able  to  stay,  yet  unable  to  stop,  the  progress  and  the 
multiplication  of  mankind. 

In  the  environment  of  childhood  and  youth,  by  far 
the  most  important  feature  is  the  society  of  persons.  In 
this  society  of  persons,  two  classes  are  of  paramount 
importance,  the  parents  and  the  teachers,  both  of  whom 
work  upon  the  child  with  intent  and  with  greater  or  less 
deliberateness.  The  whole  tradition  of  the  race  with 
respect  to  childhood  is  the  necessity  of  developing  it  or 
of  developing  manhood  or  womanhood  out  of  it.3  The 
tradition  is  against  a  natural  maturity,  that  is,  against  a 
manhood  or  womanhood  uninfluenced  by  the  deliberate 
labors  of  older  persons.  The  street  gamin  of  the  city, 
the  boy  hermit  of  the  country,  every  isolated  child,  is 

1  "  At  birth,  the  child  is  tossed  like  a  shipwrecked  mariner  upon  a 
strange  and  unknown  coast."    Hall,  Adolescence,  p.  5. 

2  Fiske,  A  Century  of  Science,  chapter  iv  ;  Butler,  Meaning  of  Educa- 
tion, pp.  6-17  ;   Charlotte  Gilman,  Woman  and  Economics,  passim;  Ter- 
man,  Journal  of  Psychology,  1905,  April,  "  Precocity  and  Prematuration." 

3  Mathews,  Proceedings  Anier.  Philos.  Soc. ;    Spencer-Gillan,  Central 
Australian  Tribes. 


io  EDUCATION   AND    SOCIETY 

believed  to  be  on  the  way  to  making  a  criminal  or  a 
lunatic.    Men  humanize  each  new  man. 

The  parents  are  the  natural  and  predestined  educators 
of  children,  the  teachers  are  their  chosen  and  voluntary 
educators.  As  civilization  grows  in  difficulty  and  in  com- 
plexity, the  popular  requirements  of  teachers  grow  con- 
•stantly  greater.  This  is  due  not  only  to  the  fact  that 
the  items  and  the  mass  of  inherited  culture  constantly 
increase, — a  heritage  that  imposes  upon  the  individual 
an  undeniable  servitude,  —  but  also  to  the  fact  that  the 
powers  of  the  individual  must  be  developed  more  and 
more  for  his  own  preservation  in  civilization  and  for  the 
preservation  of  that  civilization  itself.  One  cause  of  the 
failure,  final  and  hitherto  inevitable,  of  every  civilization 
has  been  the  inability  of  Nature  to  bring  to  birth,  and  of 
the  civilization  to  develop,  a  sufficient  number  of  persons 
competent  for  its  tasks.  The  problem  of  education,  con- 
ceived as  a  social  institution,  is  to  produce  for  "the  work 
of  the  world"  at  least  as  much  from  its  raw  material  as 
that  work  needs.  This  work  of  the  world  is  not  merely 
"the  hewing  of  wood  and  the  drawing  of  water."  It  is 
providing  for  humanity  more  than  food  and  clothes, 
homes,  shops,  factories,  and  mines.  A  purely  material 
civilization,  however  many  its  luxuries,  almost  because 
of  its  marvelous  luxuries,  would  have  no  consistency  ; 
could  never  be  established ;  if  suddenly  created,  would 
not  last  a  day.  A  hundred  and  twenty  years  ago  France, 
and  in  our  own  times  Russia,  disintegrated  in  murderous 
revolution  for  want  of  generally  diffused  intellectual  and 
moral  culture.  The  poet  is  as  much  a  necessity  to  a 
great  civilization  as  is  the  business  man  or  the  legislator ; 
ay,  and  more  of  a  necessity. 

"  We  are  the  music  makers, 

And  we  are  the  dreamers  of  dreams, 
Wandering  by  lone  sea-breakers, 
And  sitting  by  desolate  streams  ; 


THE   NATURE    OF   EDUCATION  u 

World-losers  and  world-forsakers, 

On  whom  the  pale  moon  gleams  : 
Yet  we  are  the  movers  and  shakers 

Of  the  world  forever,  it  seems. 

"  With  wonderful  deathless  ditties 
We  build  up  the  world's  great  cities, 
And  out  of  a  fabulous  story 
We  fashion  an  empire's  glory: 
One  man  with  a  dream,  at  pleasure, 

Shall  go  forth  and  conquer  a  crown : 
And  three  with  a  new  song's  measure 
Can  trample  a  kingdom  down. 

"  We,  in  the  ages  lying 

In  the  buried  past  of  the  earth, 
Built  Nineveh  with  our  sighing, 

And  Babel  itself  in  our  mirth ; 
And  o'erthrew  them  with  prophesying 

To  the  old  of  the  new  world's  worth ; 
For  each  age  is  a  dream  that  is  dying, 

Or  one  that  is  coming  to  birth."  x 

Every  civilization  requires  a  certain  amount  of  econo- 
mic burden  to  steady  it ;  a  leisure  class  is  as  neces- 
sary as  are  the  various  industrial  classes.2  This  leisure 
class,  however,  must  be  a  working  and  not  an  idling 
class.  Every  leisure  class  is  always  perilously  near  its 
own  destruction.  The  true  leisure  class  is  a  reservoir, 
often  a  well-spring,  of  true  culture.  It  makes  scholarship 
possible.  It  protects  ethics.  It  standardizes  morals.  It 
reflects,  criticises,  evaluates,  appreciates,  and  encourages 
whatever  is  good  in  the  world.  It  knows  sympathy  and 
has  time  and  disposition  to  manifest  the  graces  of  social 
and  personal  life.  It  works,  though  indeed  it  may  work 
upon  things  at  present  invisible.  Many  an  economic  par- 
asite is  a  moral  or  cultural  paragon  :  many  such  a  para- 
site has  built  for  the  economic  life  of  future  society. 

1  Arthur  O'Shaughnessy. 

2  Vide  Veblen,   Theory  of  the  Leisure  Class,  passim  ;  Mayo -Smith, 
Statistics  and  Economics,  chapter  xiii;  Statistics  and  Sociology,  p.  206. 


12  EDUCATION    AND    SOCIETY 

This  is  a  hard  doctrine,  resented  in  many  quarters, 
resented  by  nearly  every  economic  worker  who  hears  it 
and  has  time  to  think  of  it.  Because  of  their  resentment 
against  those  who  may  give  their  whole  life  to  leisure, 
there  is  a  defensive  and  reactionary  disposition  in  cer- 
tain quarters  to  declare  that  economic  laborers  shall  have 
no  leisure  at  all.  But  this  conclusion  is  distinctly  a  non 
sequitur.  The  familiar  notion  of  such  as  Tolstoi,  that  in 
an  ideal  society  all  will  work  as  producers  of  economic 
goods  or  as  servants  of  such  producers  part  of  the  time, 
and  have  leisure  for  the  rest,  is  a  merely  mechanical  view. 
This  view  ignores  one  of  the  great  qualities  of  a  civil- 
ized society,  —  its  power  to  store  up  goods,  scholarship, 
traditions,  arts,  culture,  against  the  future.  A  civilized 
society  does  not  live  from  hand  to  mouth,  no,  nor  by  a 
year  at  a  time ;  but  it  lives  centuries  beyond  its  econo- 
mic working  period,  as  Rome  and  France  lived.  If  a 
man  may  work  mornings  and  enjoy  economic  leisure 
afternoons  ;  if  he  may  work  six  days  and  rest  the 
seventh  ;  if  he  may  work  winters  and  rest  summers  or 
work  summers  and  rest  winters ;  if  he  may  support  his 
children  in  the  economic  idleness  of  school-going  ;  if  he 
may,  and  indeed  ought  to,  lay  up  a  store  "against  the 
rainy  days  "  of  invalidism,  old  age,  accident,  and  illness ; 
if  he  can  ever  earn  the  right  to  travel  for  recreation  and 
for  intellectual  and  moral  improvement ;  if  he  has  a  right 
to  the  mere  society  of  his  fellow  men  in  hours,  days,  and 
seasons  when  neither  he  nor  they  are  bearing  the  bur- 
dens of  active  labor,  — and  all  these  things  are  part  and 
parcel  of  civilization,  —  then  of  right  the  man  is  entitled 
to  leisure.  The  other  questions  —  how  he  is  to  be  sup- 
ported in  his  leisure  ;  whether  a  child  may  or  may  not 
be  rightfully  or  wisely  given,  by  inheritance  or  by  other 
social  favor,  a  leisure  that  he  (or  she)  has  not  earned  ; 
whether  the  leisure  class  is  or  is  not  too  large,  too 
secure,  too  luxurious  —  do  not  concern  us  here  as  critics 


THE   NATURE   OF   EDUCATION  13 

of    education.      We    may   well    sympathize    with    the 

plaint,  — 

"And  these  all,  laboring  for  a  lord, 
Eat  not  the  fruit  of  their  own  hands, 
Which  is  the  heaviest  of  all  plagues 
To  that  man's  mind  who  understands." 1 

But  we  must  recognize  the  fact  that  in  every  civilized 
society  there  must  be  some  who  eat  bread  in  the  sweat 
of  other  men's  faces  ;  whose  obligation  is  to  return  ten- 
fold to  their  souls.  Education  must  prepare  for  the  no- 
blest social  services  of  leisure,  deserved  or  justified,  if 
not  actually  earned. 

But  education  finds  its  larger  responsibility  in  bring- 
ing the  economic  workers,  hitherto  spoiled  more  or  less 
wantonly  of  most  of  the  benefits  of  civilization,  to  their 
highest  possible  state,  redeeming  them  in  their  eco- 
nomic labor  to  become  co-workers  with  all  others  in  gov- 
ernment, in  religion,  and  in  every  other  social  activity. 

When  should  education  begin  its  work  of  perfecting 
the  sons  and  daughters  of  men  ?  This  question  can  be 
answered  only  by  modern  physiology  and  psychology. 
It  is  scarcely  approvable  that  education  by  schooling 
should  be  begun  before  the  child  is  seven  years  old  ;  but 
occasional  education  by  suggestions,  play,  story-telling, 
and  unwatched  voluntary  manual  exercises  may  be 
beneficial  before  that  time.  A  real  garden  of  children 
is  greatly  to  be  desired  wherever  children  congregate ; 
but  the  formal  kindergarten  may  be  maintained  at  the 
price  of  passivity,  anaemia,  brain-lesions,  dullness,  arrest 
of  development,  and  consequent  failure  of  life  and  in 
life.  And  the  formal  common  school  also  is  too  often 
responsible  for  similar  wrongs.2 

When  should  education  cease  its  work  of  perfecting 
men  and  women  ?  Once  more  we  must  go  to  physiology 

1  Matthew  Arnold,  Sick  Man  of  Bokhara. 

2  Harris,  Psychological  Foundations  of  Education,  p.  142. 


14  EDUCATION   AND    SOCIETY 

and  to  psychology  for  our  answers.  While  the  brain 
and  the  nervous  system  are  able  properly  to  sustain  con- 
tinuous, directed,  exacting  mental,  manual,  and  other  or- 
ganic effort  before  seven  years  of  age,  seldom  are  they 
able  to  sustain  such  effort  after  sixty  years  of  age ; 
and  seldom  do  the  character  and  mind  of  an  individual 
display  any  improvement  from  direct  educational  effort 
after  forty  years  of  age.  In  the  old,  motives,  ideals, 
judgments  function  so  persistently  that  the  traditions 
of  society  are  conserved.  Moreover,  these  older  persons 
are  able  to  devote  most  of  their  time  and  nearly  all  of 
their  energy  to  industrial  effort,  thus  bearing  the  world 
of  humanity  upon  their  shoulders.1  Youth  generates 
ideas ;  genius,  persisting  in  youth,  devises  many  inven- 
tions ;  thereby  youth  and  genius  dower  society  with  op- 
portunities of  progress,  while  age,  proving  all  things,  holds 
fast  to  that  of  the  old  which  appears  good.  Perhaps  age 
rejects  too  much  of  the  new  that  is  good  ;  but  the  fault 
is  remediable  by  larger  education  of  individuals  and  con- 
sequently of  society. 

For  most  mankind,  these  educable  ages  of  forty  to 
sixty  are  much  too  high,  even  with  all  the  improvement 
in  physique  resulting  from  modern  hygiene  :  educational 
courses  usually  are  too  severe  for  the  brain  of  the  man  of 
forty  or  of  the  woman  of  thirty-five,  and  valueless  for  the 
character  of  the  man  or  of  the  woman  several  years  before 
that  time.  In  this  respect,  the  mental  life  runs  a  course 
equal  and  parallel  with  the  physical.  Man  appears  to 
be  educable  by  formal  processes  for  some  thirty  years  ; 
that  is,  capable  of  development  beyond  the  norm  that 
may  be  attained  without  education  by  mere  sufficiency 
of  food,  warmth,  shelter,  sleep,  and  exercise.  But  man 
is  most  educable  in  the  earlier  half  of  this  period  ;  and 
the  climactic  years  of  educability  may  be  assigned  as  in 
primary  adolescence  from  fourteen  to  twenty  in  males 

1  Shaler,  TTie  Individual,  p.  269. 


THE   NATURE   OF   EDUCATION  15 

of  the  Teutonic  race  and  from  thirteen  to  eighteen  in 
females.  Though  there  may  be  much  learning  after  this 
period,  the  ideas  acquired  do  not  function  later  as  effi- 
ciently in  the  modes  of  motives,  habits,  ideals,1  and 
judgments  as  do  those  acquired  before  the  brain  structure 
is  finished  and  the  adolescent  ferment  has  subsided  ; 
while  ideas  acquired  before  ten  or  twelve  years  of  age 
are  too  insecure,  perhaps  partly  from  physiological  or 
anatomical  causes,2  but  no  doubt  mainly  from  lack  of 
experience  (in  other  words,  scarcity  and  vagueness  of 
ideas),  to  remain  the  permanent  and  dominant  possessions 
of  the  mind.3 

Mere  economic  tradition  and  self-interest  must  not 
blind  us  to  the  fact  that  the  half-dozen  years  of  second- 
ary adolescence,  from  twenty  to  twenty-five,  are  quite  as 
valuable  for  "  conscious  evolution  "  4  as  are  the  half-dozen 
years  before  primary  adolescence,  which  the  fashion  of 
American  democracy  has  arbitrarily,  complacently,  and 
wantonly  chosen  for  "compulsory  education."  5 

There  is,  it  seems,  a  serious  general  misconception  of  the 
purpose  of  adolescent  education.  No  physiologist  or  psy- 
chologist wonders  at  the  success  of  the  thousands  of  "  self- 
made  "  men  who  have  learned  to  read,  to  write,  and  to  cipher 
after  being  "  grown  up,"  that  is,  at  eighteen  or  twenty  years 
of  age.  Lincoln  did  his  high  school  work  with  a  teacher  as  a 
tutor  after  he  had  become  a  member  of  the  legislature  of 
Illinois,  and  benefited  by  that  education  : 8  his  experience 
was  not  unusual,  but  typical.  No  physiologist  or  psychologist 
wonders  at  the  failure  of  the  thousands  of  high  school  and 
college  educated  men  who  never  appreciated  or  soon  forgot 
their  "  advantages."  Truth  cannot  be  set  solidly  into  plastic 

1  Bagley,  The  Educative  Process,  chapters  thus  entitled 

2  Donaldson,  Growth  of  the  Brain,  chapter  iv. 
8  Hall,  Adolescence,  first  three  chapters. 

4  Davidson,  History  of  Education,  preface. 

5  "  The  Educational  Outlook,"  Journal  of  Pedagogy,  July,  1905. 

6  Curtis,  Life  of  Lincoln,  pp.  62-63. 


16  EDUCATION   AND    SOCIETY 

minds ;  before  eighteen  or  twenty,  all  minds  are  plastic,  or 
should  be.  The  full  period  of  secondary  adolescence,  from 
twenty  to  twenty-eight  in  men  and  from  eighteen  to  twenty- 
five  in  women,  is  the  right  or  best  time  for  marriage,  for  the 
sufficient  reason  that  docility  or  adjustability  is  still  active, 
though  declining,  while  the  body  is  growing  in  strength,  in 
weight,  and  in  vigor.  Monogamic  marriage,  indeed,  is  the 
latest  important  historical  mode  of  education  for  man  and  for 
woman  alike,  and  parentage  is  the  final  genetic  process  in 
the  normal  schooling  of  humanity.1 

By  what  means  and  by  what  methods  shall  teachers 
proceed  to  educate  childhood,  youth,  and  young  man- 
hood and  womanhood  ?  Obviously  by  such  as  in  theory 
and  in  practice  have  resulted  in  the  best,  the  most  nobly 
educated,  men  and  women.  Who  have  been,  who  are, 
these  best  and  noblest  men  and  women  ?  What  means 
and  what  methods  did  their  teachers  employ  to  de- 
velop their  qualities,  to  bring  their  powers  to  fruition,  to 
produce  in  them  sweetness  and  light,2  sympathy  and 
virtue,  wisdom  and  power  ?  The  answer  is  the  tale  of 
biography  since  the  record  of  individual  lives  began.  We 
know  that  certain  men  and  women  have  been,  must  have 
been,  well  educated :  by  their  fruits,  we  know  them.3 
They  have  met  the  standard  of  universal  morals ;  they 
have  manifested  the  ideals  of  an  abundant  and  aspiring 
life.4  Not  one  of  them  was  perfect ;  but  some  were  flaw- 
less, sinless,  just  and  fair  in  a  noble  sincerity,  of  whom 
Socrates  was  the  type.  To  these  ten  thousand  of  the 
"just  men  made  perfect,"5  from  Moses  to  Lincoln,  we 
must  look  for  the  ideals  of  education  and  for  the  methods 

1  Libby,  "  Shakespeare's  Treatment  of  Adolescence,"  Pedagogical  Sem- 
inary ;  Howard,  History  of  Matrimonial  Institutions,  vol.  iii,  pp.  244-259. 

2  Matthew  Arnold,  Culture  and  Anarchy. 
8  Matthew  vii,  20.     A  saying  of  Jesus'. 

*  John  x,  10.  "  I  am  come  that  they  might  have  life,  and  that  they  might 
have  it  more  abundantly"  (overflowingly,  Tepiao-rfv),  a  saying  of  Jesus'. 
6  Paul,  Hebrews  xii,  23. 


THE   NATURE   OF   EDUCATION  17 

of  reaching  or  approximating  these  ideals.  "  Be  ye  there- 
fore perfect,  even  as  your  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect," 
seems  an  impossible  requirement.1  Men  should  be  per- 
fectly prepared  for  this  life  that  now  is,  just  as  God  is 
perfectly  able  to  live  wholly  His  life. 

The  means  by  which  the  best  of  earth  were  prepared 
for  their  lives  have  varied  more  in  appearance  than  in 
reality.  The  good  and  great  have  known  both  society 
and  solitude.  The  one  makes  and  tests  character,  the 
other  intelligence.  A  good  man  cannot  grow  alone  upon 
a  desert  island ;  nor  can  a  great  man  grow  in  the  throng 
of  the  crowded  street.  Emerson  and  Goethe  are  the 
teachers  of  a  true  wisdom ;  but  the  opinion  of  neither 
is  completely  true.  Moses,  Buddha,  Jesus,  Mohammed, 
each  withdrew  into  the  mountains  and  into  the  wilder- 
nesses "to  pray." 

"  True  dignity  abides  with  him  alone 
Who,  in  the  silent  hour  of  inward  thought, 
Can  still  suspect  and  still  revere  himself 
In  lowliness  of  heart."3 

Great  and  good  men  have  ever  loved  the  silences  ;  but 
they  have  also  dared,  must  dare,  the  market-places  with 
their  many  voices.  In  the  dialectic  of  mental  growth, 
we  go  forward  by  zigzag  from  experiences  to  reflection 
and  back  again  to  experiences ;  and  the  most  important 
of  our  experiences  are  those  with  men.  When  Tenny- 
son asked,  — 

"  Is  it  well  that  while  we  range  with  Science,  glorying  in  the  Time, 
City  children  soak  and  blacken  soul  and  sense  in  city  slime  ?  "  8 

he  was  perhaps  too  gloomy,  and  presented  eloquently 
what  should  be  considered  with  the  cooler  judgment  of 

1  Matthew  v,  48.  The  word  re\eios,  translated  here  "  perfect,"  means 
complete,  as  in  the  case  of  the  newborn  babe,  ready  for  this  world,  per- 
fect of  its  kind.    The  goal  of  the  babe,  which  is  birth,  has  been  attained. 
The  word  does  not  mean  perfect  in  the  sense  of  final,  ended. 

2  Wordsworth,  Poems  written  in  Youth,  Lines,  p.  33,  Boston,  1854. 
8  Lockslcy  Hall  Sixty  Years  After. 


IS  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

psychology.  The  senses  of  children  are  indeed  soaked 
and  sodden  by  the  too  many  and  too  intense  sensations 
of  the  city  street ;  and  souls  are  drowned  there  by  sense- 
suffocation.  The  soul  is  bleached  rather  than  blackened 
in  the  cavernous  city,  whose  life,  to  those  really  knowing 
and  understanding  it,  is  rather  quicksand  than  slime.  It  is 
true  that  the  children  of  the  tenements  seldom  grow  into 
men  and  women  of  many  talents.  Lacking  these,  they 
remain  poor.  Yet  how  rich  in  the  powers  and  graces  of 
character  are  these  tenement-poor !  Is  it  not  sadly  true 
that  the  children  of  the  isolated  country  districts  seldom 
grow  into  men  and  women  of  equally  philanthropic  char- 
acter ?  The  inability  of  the  country-bred  youth  to  resist 
the  temptations  of  city  life  is  familiar  to  every  observer. 
What  Wordsworth  wrote, — 

"  The  world  is  too  much  with  us ;  late  and  soon, 
Getting  and  spending,  we  lay  waste  our  powers,"  l 

is  an  impulse  moving  in  the  soul  of  every  man  who 
seeks  the  wilderness  that  he  may  recover  himself  from 
civilization.  Of  course,  one  may  find  solitude  in  a  city 
room,  and  companionship  upon  the  moor.  The  aphorism 
of  Goethe  must  not  be  taken  too  literally.2  Emerson 
expressed  the  truth  in  this  compact  paragraph,  — 

"  Here  again,  as  so  often,  Nature  delights  to  put  us  between 
extreme  antagonisms,  and  our  safety  is  in  the  skill  with  which 
we  keep  the  diagonal  line.  Solitude  is  impracticable,  and 
Society  fatal.  We  must  keep  our  heads  in  the  one  and  our 
hands  in  the  other.  The  conditions  are  met,  if  we  keep  our 
independence,  yet  do  not  lose  our  sympathy.  These  wonder- 
ful horses  need  to  be  driven  by  fine  hands.  We  require  such 
a  solitude  as  shall  hold  us  to  its  revelations  when  we  are  in 
the  street  and  in  palaces  :  for  most  men  are  cowed  in  society, 
and  say  good  things  to  you  in  private,  but  will  not  stand 
to  them  in  public.  But  let  us  not  be  the  victims  of  words. 

1  Miscellaneous  Sonnets,  1836. 

2  Legend,  Part  Three,  p.  20 1 ,  infra. 


THE    NATURE   OF  EDUCATION  19 

Society  and  solitude  are  deceptive  names.  It  is  not  the  cir- 
cumstance of  seeing  more  or  fewer  people,  but  readiness  of 
sympathy,  that  imports ;  and  a  sound  mind  will  derive  its 
principles  from  insight,  with  ever  a  purer  ascent  to  the  suffi- 
cient and  absolute  right,  and  will  accept  society  as  the  natural 
element  in  which  they  are  to  be  applied."  1 

The  school  (0^0X77,  leisure)  is  partly  a  matter  of  society 
(collegium,  bringing  together)  and  partly  a  matter  of 
solitude  in  study  (studium,  effort).  The  school  is  the 
typical  means  of  the  teacher  in  his  effort  to  educate  the 
pupil.  The  school  is  perhaps  too  much  a  matter  of 
the  crowd.2  Rousseau,  Locke,  and  Mark  Hopkins  all  con- 
sidered education  a  process  for  the  society  of  but  two, 
the  teacher  and  the  learner.  We  do  not  accept  this  ideal, 
pitying  quite  as  much  the  lone  pupil  of  tutor  or  gov- 
erness as  the  distracted  pupil  of  the  crowded,  factoryized 
public  school  class  with  its  overburdened  instructor. 
Our  ideal  is  part  study  and  reflection  in  solitude,  part  in- 
dividual instruction  by  the  teacher,  part  class  recitation. 

Fortunate  is  the  child  or  youth  who  may  visit  the 
lonely  seacoast,  the  secluded  forest,  for  weeks  at  a  time 
in  each  year.  There  he  may  learn  what  Wordsworth, 
Bryant,  Thoreau  knew  of  the  lessons  of  Nature. 

"  Oh,  there  is  not  lost 

One  of  earth's  charms  :  upon  her  bosom  yet, 
After  the  flight  of  untold  centuries, 
The  freshness  of  her  far  beginning  lies, 
And  yet  shall  lie."  » 

One  who  has  known  the  varied  glories  of  the  natural 
world,  who  has  seen  perhaps  through  the  eyes  of  some 
scientist,  poet,  philosopher,  a  part  of  the  truth,  knows  a 
reserve,  a  poise,  a  health  of  the  soul  that  should  pre- 
serve him  sweet  and  innocent  in  the  thick  of  humanity ; 

1  Emerson,  Society  and  Solitude,  final  paragraph. 

2  Bryan,  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching,  chapter  i. 
8  Bryant,  A  Forest  Hymn. 


20  EDUCATION    AND   SOCIETY 

but  only  the  world  itself  can  teach  him  to  be  strong. 
Nature  is  like  food  ;  society  like  exercise.  Fortunate 
is  that  youth  who,  knowing  Nature,  has  been  severely 
tried  among  men. 

"  If  the  chosen  soul  could  never  be  alone 
In  deep  mid-silence,  open-doored  to  God, 
No  greatness  ever  had  been  dreamed  or  done; 
Among  dull  hearts,  a  prophet  neve'r  grew ; 
The  nurse  of  full-grown  souls  is  solitude. 

And  who  hath  trod  Olympus,  from  his  eye 
Fades  not  that  broader  outlook  of  the  gods ; 
His  life's  low  valleys  overbrow  earth's  clouds. 

He  in  the  palace-aisles  of  untrod  woods 
Doth  walk  a  king ;  for  him  the  pent-up  cell 
Widens  beyond  the  circles  of  the  stars, 
And  all  the  sceptred  spirits  of  the  past 
Come  thronging  in  to  greet  him  as  their  peer; 
But  in  the  market-place's  glare  and  throng 
He  sits  apart,  an  exile,  and  his  brow 
Aches  with  the  mocking  memory  of  its  crown."  * 

Even  in  early  years,  one  may  discern  the  truth  de- 
clared by  Carlyle,  Ruskin,  and  Lowell,  that  society  dries 
and  seasons  the  soul  as  the  kiln  dries  and  seasons  the 
wood  from  the  forest. 

In  the  education  of  a  man,  there  are  many  elements. 
We  may  collect  some  of  them  in  the  term  Nature,  and 
the  rest  in  the  term  Human  Nature.  Or  we  may  employ 
the  terms  Sciences,  Arts,  and  Humanities.  Again,  all 
knowledge  and  all  experience  may  be  comprised  within 
the  terms  Philosophy  and  History.  Names  often  reflect 
methods,  sometimes  dictate  them.  For  educational  pur- 
poses, the  method  makes  or  mars  the  subject. 

Studies  and   exercises  in  public  elementary  schools  are 
sometimes  classified  as  Essentials  and  Non-essentials.   These 
very  terms  demonstrate  a  utilitarian  philosophy.    High  school 
1  Lowell,  Columbus. 


THE    NATURE   OF   EDUCATION  21 

courses  are  sometimes  classified  as  Classical,  Scientific, 
Technical,  Commercial.  These  terms  betray  traditionalism, 
juxtapositing,  accident,  abject  surrender  to  present  opinion. 
A  secondary  pupil  is  said  to  "study  Latin"  for  four  or  five 
years,  a  phrase  that  tells  the  pedagogical  fact  of  grammar 
above  thought,  form  above  spirit.  Still  worse  is  the  classifi- 
cation of  disciplinary  and  informational  subjects.  These 
abortive  terms  disclose  a  mode  of  teaching  that  evidences 
not  pedagogy  or  even  methodology,  but  pseudo-philosophy. 
Yet  this  false  philosophy,  in  defiance  not  only  of  modern  psy- 
chology and  of  all  common  sense,  but  also  of  the  old  psycho- 
logy of  the  intellect  (which  every  teacher  has  been  supposed 
to  know,  whether  applying  it  or  not),  has  prevailed  very  gener- 
ally, and  has  driven  more  boys  and  girls  out  of  school  than 
all  other  causes,  —  social,  economic,  or  whatever  else,  —  sev- 
erally or  taken  together.  The  tale  of  arithmetic  and  the  tale 
of  grammar  in  the  elementary  schools  have  recited  the  ruin 
of  two  perfect  subjects  by  drill.  Every  genuinely  educational 
method  involves  concurrently  information  and  habituation. 

The  true  analysis  of  knowledge  for  the  purposes  of 
education  comports  with  the  analysis  of  the  presentation 
of  thought  in  consciousness.  In  that  presentation,  I 
receive  the  sensation  with  a  chorus  of  half-sensations, 
like  echoes  or  overtones  of  a  true  note;  while  I,  who 
receive  it,  am  flooded  with  memories  and  imaginings 
from  the  past.  The  new  sensation  marks  the  present. 
It  is  a  verity,  without  a  history.  In  education,  each  fact 
is  to  be  presented  vividly,  or  not  at  all.  It  becomes  a 
present  or  a  presented  fact,  without  a  history.  For  the 
purposes  of  education,  every  presented  fact  should  con- 
form to  some  philosophy.  Unless  essential  in  substance 
or  in  process  to  the  education  of  the  person  receiving  it, 
the  fact,  truth,  principle,  is  foreign,  inapplicable,  and 
to  be  rejected.  For  the  purposes  of  education,  every 
fact  used  must  belong  properly  and  logically  to  the 
essentials.  In  education,  Nature  becomes  subjective 
and  wholly  subordinate  to  human  nature.  Of  course, 


22  EDUCATION    AND   SOCIETY 

this  is  true  philosophically,  though  scientists  and  prac- 
tical persons  sometimes  like  to  forget  it :  scouting  ideal- 
ism, they  fail  in  sound  psychology.1  Indubitably,  the 
mind  conditions,  colors,  and  moulds  whatever  it  discerns. 
The  question  of  the  learner,  What  is  the  use  of  knowing 
this  ?  may  be  unanswerable  to  him  or  by  him ;  but  it 
must  rouse  in  the  mind  of  the  teacher  the  correlative 
question,  What  is  the  use  of  teaching  this  ?  This  ques- 
tion the  teacher  must  answer  before  proceeding  farther 
lest  in  this  respect  he  fail  of  being  truly  an  educator. 

As  for  the  distinctions  of  the  Arts,  the  Sciences,  and 
the  Humanities,  a  chief  article  in  the  creed  of  every  true 
scientist  seems  to  be  correctness  in  system,2  and  of  every 
true  artist,  perfect  accord  with  fact.8  The  humanitarian 
seeks  for  himself,  his  enterprise,  his  principle,  social 
values  ;  and  the  societarian  desires  to  lead  men  to  truth, 
to  beauty,  and  to  goodness,  respectively  the  ideals  of 
the  Sciences,  the  Arts,  and  the  Humanities.  For  the  pur- 
poses of  education,  we  must  preserve  the  wholeness, 
or  at  least  the  correlations,  of  knowledge. 

Because  education  is  a  system  of  successive  efforts 
to  effect  presentations  in  consciousness,  and  there  to 
affect  their  constitution,  it  must  concern  itself  with  me, 
the  conscious  being.  Only  in  this  sense  is  education 
influenced  by  history  as  such.  The  educator,  as  the 
maker  of  states  of  consciousness  that  are  not  accidental 
or  incidental  or  occasional,  but  purposive  and  often  sys- 

1  The  argument  in  the  text  is  not  for  idealism,  but  for  some  theory, 
any  reasonable  theory,  that  fairly  accounts  for  the  mutual  interrelations 
of  body  and  soul.  Cf.  Strong,  Why  the  Mind  has  a  Body,  pp.  294,  295, 
341  etseq.  His  argument  is  for  some  "double  aspect"  theory,  e.  g.  psy- 
chophysical  idealism  or  perhaps  panpsychism. 

8  "  Mere  system,  of  course,  does  not  constitute  a  subject  a  science:  ab- 
solute, unvarying,  interpretative  law  is  requisite."  Fisher,  Science,  "  Eco- 
nomics as  a  Science,"  August  31,  1906. 

8  As  internally  and  spiritually  perceived  and  understood.  Esthetic 
perceptions  are  subjective:  scientific  perceptions  are,  in  a  sense,  objec- 
tive. 


THE   NATURE   OF   EDUCATION  23 

tematic,  and  either  consecutive  or  regular,  must  know  the 
conditions  governing  the  ego  in  consciousness.  These 
conditions  are  largely  physiological,  and  whatever  is 
humanly  physiological  is  necessarily  the  product  of  gen- 
eral biologic  history.  Man  is  the  offspring  of  all  the 
animals  that  went  into  his  making.1  Moreover,  their 
experiences,  their  consciousnesses,  have  left  in  man 
residuums,  echoes,  atmospheres,  tones  that  tell  the 
past.2  It  is  better  so.  We  need  to  feel  our  kinship  with 
all  creatures  and  with  all  Nature.  To  accept  this  is  not 
to  deny  the  origin  of  the  soul  immediately  from  God. 
We  may  try  to  satisfy  ourselves  with  definitions,  saying 
perhaps  that  spirit  is  the  one  reality,  the  thing-in-itself, 
that  mind  is  conscious  spirit  and  matter  unconscious 
spirit,  and  that  soul  is  self-conscious  mind ;  but  we  know 
in  our  hearts  that  in  truth  we  are  not  obligated  to  un- 
derstand the  relation  between  God  and  Nature,  or  that 
between  mind  and  body,  for  we  are  finite  and  are  not  to 
be  called  upon  to  produce  the  infinite.  We  are  creators 
of  nothing  whatever.  Only  God  needs  to  know  what  man 
really  is.3  At  best,  we  see  only  in  part.4  Our  only  duty 
is  to  see  clearly  the  part  within  our  vision.  To  do  this,  we 
must  cheerfully  accept  the  truth,  whatever  truth  is  de- 
monstrated to  our  reason.5  The  need  of  truth  is  general, 
not  particular  or  special :  it  is  not  only  a  religious  need, 
or  a  psychological,  or  an  educational,  or  a  scientific,6  but 
it  is  all  these.  True  or  false  ;  that  is  the  only  question.7 
Truth  is  the  price  of  freedom,  which  is  the  goal  of 

1  Darwin,  Descent  of  Man,  chapters  ii,  vi. 

2  Hall,  Adolescence,  chapter  x ;  Darwin,  op.  cit.  chapter  iii. 
8  Lotze,  Microcosmus,  book  ii,  chapter  ii. 

4  i  Corinthians  ix,  9-12,  expresses  this  philosophy  of  Paul. 

5  "  It  is  wrong  always,  everywhere,  and  for  any  one,  to  believe  any- 
thing upon  insufficient  evidence."   Clifford,  Essays,  p.  344. 

6  "  Howbeit  when  he,  the  Spirit  of  truth,  is  come,  he  will  guide  you 
into  all  truth."   Jesus,  John,  Gospel  xvi,  13. 

7  Huxley,  Science  and  Culture,  p.  240. 


24  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

man,  the  mark  of  his   sonship  to  God,  the  perfectly 
free. 

"  For  He  that  worketh  high  and  wise, 

Nor  pauses  in  His  plan, 
Will  take  the  sun  out  of  the  skies 
Ere  freedom  out  of  man." 1 

As  the  scientific  method  for  developing  freedom  in 
man  and  in  society,  education  must  use  truth  and  truth 
only,  but  truth  skillfully.  "  The  truth,"  said  Jesus,  "  shall 
make  you  free."  2  But  skillful  teaching  of  truth  is  simply 
teaching  truth  by  methods  true  to  the  human  mind. 
These  methods  are  summarized  in  the  sciences,  that  is, 
the  systematized  truths  as  far  as  we  know  them,  of  psy- 
chology and  of  pedagogy  or  education.  Education,  there- 
fore, must  operate  in  the  light  of  the  consciousness  of 
man,  which  has  been  built  up  through  all  the  ages.3  This 
is  the  familiar  "recapitulation  theory,"4  which  should 
be  pressed  by  education  much  farther  than  is  yet  com- 
mon in  practice.  By  this  theory,  the  individual  repeats 
in  body  and  in  mind  the  history  of  the  race.  In  strict 
truth,  he  repeats  in  body  the  tale  of  his  own  particular 
ancestry,5  and  in  soul  the  tale  of  those  who  have  become 
knewn  to  him  and  who  have  been  appreciated  by  him. 
He  repeats,  and  he  varies.6  In  his  variability  lies  all 
his  hope  of  progress.  His  physical  recapitulation  and 
his  physical  variability  are  narrow  enough  compared 

1  Emerson,  Concord  Ode. 

2  John,  Gosfel  viii,  32. 

8  Hall,  Heirs  of  the  Ages,  pamphlet. 

4  Drummond,  Ascent  of  Man,  chapter  iv ;  Baldwin,  Mental  Develop- 
ment, pp.  14  et  seq.  The  term  "  culture  epochs  theory  "  does  not  fully 
cover  its  content. 

6  Up  to  the  period  of  conception  in  the  case  of  his  father,  and  of  birth 
or  perhaps  of  weaning  in  the  case  of  his  mother.  The  experience  of  aged 
men  and  women  cannot  pass  to  posterity  via  heredity.  The  text  does  not 
deny  or  assert  that  the  soul  is  likewise  inherited.  If  it  is,  how  fortunate 
that  we  inherit  the  bodies  and  souls  of  youth  and  of  early  maturity  only  1 

*  Darwin,  Origin  of  Species,  chapter  iL 


THE   NATURE  OF   EDUCATION  25 

with  the  possibilities  of  his  psychical  repetitions  and 
differentiations,  which  depend  largely  upon  his  educa- 
tional opportunities.  In  his  soul,  he  may  repeat,  he  may 
even  improve  upon,  the  emotions,  thoughts,  impulses, 
of  the  very  greatest  and  best  men  who  ever  lived  before 
him  or  are  living  now.  It  is  this  phase  of  the  possible 
recapitulations  of  man  that  education  is  too  much  dis- 
posed to  ignore. 

To  suppose  that  repeating  the  economic  history,  or 
the  social,  or  the  religious,  or  the  cultural  is  enough  for 
a  highly  educated  individual  is  quite  as  fallacious  as  to 
suppose  that  such  a  repetition  of  the  history  of  nations 
is  enough  for  a  new  nation  "  in  the  foremost  files  of 
time."  The  familiar  summary,  "  Ontogeny  recapitulates 
phylogeny,"  is  a  truth ;  but  one  that  does  not  go  far 
enough  for  education.  As  a  beginning,  we  should  con- 
cern ourselves  with  the  principle  that  no  man  can  develop 
soundly  save  by  repeating  every  stage  and  every  step 
by  which  the  race  has  progressed.  Thus,  the  individual 
is  made  human  by  being  humanized  in  embryo  and  in 
independent  body,  in  infantile  and  maturing  soul.  He 
develops  best  as  well  as  most  rapidly  who  takes  the 
smallest  number  of  false  steps  and  delays  least  at  the 
various  stages :  he  is  neither  distracted  from  his  pur- 
pose to  grow  nor  arrested  in  his  growth.  Therefore, 
that  education  is  best  which  avoids  the  pitfalls  and  pro- 
ceeds to  the  goal. 

The  child  and  youth  will  think  of  stealing  and  of 
killing  :  restrained  in  these  thoughts,  to  him  property  and 
sanctity  of  life  come  to  be  realities.  He  will  inevitably 
desire  to  be  indolent :  encouraged  in  industry,  to  him 
work  becomes  a  moral  duty.  He  will  lie,  he  will  lust, 
he  will  imagine  treacheries  and  dishonors,  he  will  devise 
all  historic  sins,  as  did  his  ancestors,  animal  and  human  : 
let  him  inhibit  these  psychoses,  and  he  will  achieve 
truthfulness,  chastity,  fealty,  honor.  Though  it  be  granted 


26  EDUCATION    AND    SOCIETY 

that  one  who  gives  way  to  these  ancestral  promptings 
and  indulges  them  may  yet,  after  the  satisfactions  of 
experience,  clear  and  clean  his  soul  and  develop  beyond 
them,  upon  the  principle  of  the  Aristotelian  catharsis,1 
two  things  still  remain  true :  that  he  who  never  steals 
or  murders  or  idles  or  lies  or  otherwise  sins  will  most 
quickly  and  most  surely  attain  moral  freedom  and  intel- 
lectual power,  and  that  society  will  have  no  harsh  or  pitying 
memories  of  him  to  cloud  its  picture  of  his  final  virtue. 
What  society,  in  its  successive  stages,  has  agreed  to  call 
"  vice  "  or  "  sin"  has  not  been  the  highway  either  to  per- 
sonal virtue  or  to  social  favor,  though  moral  fault  has 
often  been  the  highway  to  power,  and  society  has  for- 
given much  to  those  who  have  served  its  greater  interests. 

Jesus  taught  us  to  pray,  "  Lead  us  not  into  temptation,2 
but  deliver  us  from  evil."  To  be  consistent,  one  who  argues 
that  the  child  must  be  savage,  barbarian,  hunter,  shepherd, 
farmer,  mechanic,  clerk,  scholar,  statesman,  and  more,  in 
order  to  realize  himself  through  conscious  repetition  of  race 
history,  should  also  argue  that  he  must  be  slayer,  thief,  forni- 
cator,  idler,  liar,  sloven,  traitor,  and  worse,  if  worse  there  be ; 
for  man  morally  has  manifested  all  these  criminal  and  base 
creatures.  The  psychoses  of  all  these  ancestral  experiences 
endure  more  or  less  darkly  or  clearly  in  every  human  being : 
they  are  our  latent  or  potent  temptations.8 

1  Nicomachean  Ethics ;  Politics  ;  also  cf.  Virtue  and  Vice,  probably 
not  written  by  him. 

2  "  For  we  have  not  an  high  priest  which  cannot  be  touched  with  the 
feeling  of  our  infirmities ;  but  was  in  all  points  tempted  like  as  we  are, 
yet  without  sin."    Paul  ( ? ),  Hebrews  iv,  15. 

8  "  But  I  say  unto  you,  that  whosoever  looketh  on  a  woman  to  lust 
after  her  hath  committed  adultery  with  her  already  in  his  heart."  Mat- 
thew v,  28.  A  saying  of  Jesus'. 

"  Thou  shalt  not  covet  thy  neighbour's  house  .  .  .  nor  any  thing  that 
is  thy  neighbour's."  Exodus  xx,  1 7.  To  covet  is  to  be  ready  to  take. 
These  outgrown  psychoses  are  all  too  ready  to  waken  into  will.  We 
inherit  the  youth  of  our  ancestors.  This  is  physical  good  fortune  ;  but 
perhaps  psychical  ill  fortune,  for  the  virtues  acquired  in  late  life  —  tem- 
perance, prudence,  self-command,  and  self-restraint  —  are  not  trans- 


THE   NATURE   OF   EDUCATION  27 

In  this  phase  of  the  recapitulation  theory,  there  is 
a  truth  for  pedagogy.  Upon  evidence  of  a  new  psy- 
chosis, echoing  the  past,  the  educator  should  endeavor 
to  check  at  once  whatever  is  bad  (i.  e.  contrary  to  mod- 
ern morals),  and  to  develop  quickly  and  fully  whatever 
is  good  (i.  e.  in  conformity  with  essential  morals).  The 
evil  instinct  is  to  be  encouraged  to  atrophy.  It  is  the 
duty  of  pedagogy  to  know  how  to  check,  to  cut  off,  to 
paralyze,  or  to  encyst  the  bad  in  its  nascent  period.1 
This  is  one  of  the  essential  methods  of  education. 

It  may  seem  narrow,  one-sided,  partial,  to  evaluate 
education  thus  in  the  terms  of  morals  ;  but  upon  reflec- 
tion such  an  evaluation  is  thoroughly  sound.  Morals  are 
not  wholly  a  matter  of  will  and  but  slightly  a  matter  of 
feeling  :  they  are  largely  a  matter  of  intellect.  Socrates 
was  altogether  right  when  he  argued  that  "knowledge 
is  virtue."  An  intelligent  man  cannot  be  moral  in  mat- 
ters above  his  comprehension,  nor  can  an  ignorant  man 
be  moral  in  matters  outside  of  his  knowledge. 

The  law  is  theoretically  a  system  for  executing  justice 
between  man  and  society  and  between  man  and  man.  It  is 
a  metaphysic  designed  to  interpret  right  and  wrong  in  terms. 
It  is  also  an  ethic  designed  to  reduce  the  metaphysical  terms 
to  concrete  realities.  The  "  quibbles  "  of  the  law,  however, 
are  quite  as  notorious  as  are  the  subtleties  of  scholasticism. 
In  matters  of  right  and  wrong,  hair-splitting  is  often  inev- 
itable. In  consequence,  the  law  requires  very  able  men  in 
its  administration ;  and  its  applications  demonstrate  by 
induction  that  morality  is  conditioned  by  intelligence.  Only 
the  wise  judge  can  be  righteous  in  difficult  cases. 

Government  is  carried  on  by  men,  some  of  whom  are 
incapable  of  comprehending  their  tasks.  Many  an  intellectual 
blunder  or  error  has  been  charged  to  moral  turpitude.  "To 

milled.    Each  man  must  discipline  himself,  that  he  may  manifest  the  life 
of  reason.    Cf.  Santayana,  The  Life  of  Reason,  passim. 

1  Ellis,  "  Philosophy  of  Education,"  Pedagogical  Seminary,  October, 
1897. 


28  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

be  faithful  to  one's  own  "  is  sound  family  morals,  but  it  is 
vicious  government  procedure  until  "one's  own"  are  con- 
ceived as  enlarged  to  include  all  the  community :  such  en- 
largement of  vision  is  beyond  the  intellect  of  some  legislators 
and  officers  of  the  State.  Men  of  narrow  experience  often  go 
astray  in  government  affairs  for  want  of  criteria  of  judg- 
ment. 

There  is  a  large  aspect  of  the  recapitulation  theory  that 
is  social.  The  individual  is  to  discover  for  himself  that 
great  life  which  the  race  has  wrought  for  itself  in  and 
through  civilization.  He  will  not  become  wholly  human 
until  he  knows  what  the  associations  and  institutions 
of  mankind  are  and  what  they  mean.  As  long  as  this 
knowledge  is  denied  him  and  in  the  degree  in  which  it 
is  denied  to  him,  so  long  and  in  this  degree  he  is  out- 
side of  humanity.  In  this  phase  of  sociological  theory, 
he  is  not  yet  conscious  of  his  kinship ;  *  and  here  human- 
ity is  conceived  not  as  real  mankind,  but  as  the  ideal 
mankind  that  we  believe  we  are  helping  to  produce. 
It  belongs  to  education  to  introduce  the  growing  mind 
to  these  social  institutions. 

Education  may  be  described  more  easily  than  it  may 
be  defined.  It  is  a  system  of  processes  for  liberalizing 
the  soul.  The  most  highly  educated  man  is  he  who  is 
most  free,  farthest-sighted,  strongest  in  purpose,  kindest 
among  men.  To  be  highly  educated  is  to  desire  truth,  to 
admire  beauty,  to  love  goodness.  To  desire  truth  is  to 
seek  facts,  and  within  the  facts  laws,  and  to  abandon  the 
falsities  clearly  exposed  by  the  truths.  To  admire  beauty 
is  to  see  into  the  harmonies  and  concords  of  Nature 
and  of  Art,  and  to  appreciate  their  order,  peace,  and 
propriety.  To  be  good  is  to  avoid  sin,  which  is  harming 
others  or  one's  self,  and  to  seek  righteousness,  which  is 
helping  others  or  one's  self  without  sin.  Goodness  is  a 
matter  of  the  will,  as  every  one  knows  ;  truth,  a  matter 

1  Giddings,  Principles  of  Sociology,  chapter  L 


THE   NATURE   OF   EDUCATION  29 

of  the  intellect ;  beauty,  a  matter  of  the  heart.  They  are 
various  aspects  of  the  soul. 

With  these  excellent  qualities,  a  diseased  or  awkward 
or  depraved  body  scarcely  comports.  Therefore,  not  for 
its  own  sake,  but  for  the  sake  of  its  inmate,  the  soul,  the 
body  is  to  be  nourished,  exercised,  and  trained.  Not 
weight  or  size  or  strength,  but  grace,  vigor,  and  health 
are  the  signs  of  a  body  fit  for  an  excellent  soul.  The 
body  is  to  be  the  servant  of  the  self-conscious  spirit. 
These  are  but  commonplaces  ;  and  yet  for  want  of 
them  many  a  scholar  and  many  an  athlete  has  gone  to 
ruin. 

Education  has  but  one  proper  manner  ;  this  is  order- 
liness.1 It  includes  calmness,  timeliness,  propriety,  pur- 
pose, completeness.  Education  has,  it  is  true,  time  for 
ecstasy ;  but  it  is  the  ecstasy  of  poetry,  not  of  hysteria. 
Education  has  a  time  for  conflict ;  but  it  is  the  conflict 
of  deliberate  warfare,  not  of  fanatic  riot.  Education  has 
a  time  for  dreaming ;  but  it  is  the  dreaming  in  revery, 
not  in  hallucination  and  in  delusion.  Order  is  the  man- 
ner of  education,  which  is  the  method  of  approach  to 
heaven,  the  scene  and  evidence  of  the  life  eternal. 

Education  seeks  to  discover,  to  produce,  and  to  perfect 
that  harmony  which  is  the  essential  nature  of  the  soul.3 
For  what  is  the  soul  but  a  harmony  of  all  the  powers ; 
and  what  can  heaven  be  but  a  harmony  of  educated 
souls  ?  So  Plato  reasoned,3  and  Jesus  taught.4 

1  "To  everything  there  is  a  season,  and  a  time  to  every  purpose 
under  the  heaven :  a  time  to  be  born,  and  a  time  to  die  ;  .  .  .  a  time  to 
break  down,  and  a  time  to  build  up ;  ...  a  time  to  keep  silence,  and  a 
time  to  speak ;  .  .  .  a  time  of  war,  and  a  time  of  peace."  Ecclesiastes 
Hi,  1-8.  "  A  certain  order,  then,  proper  to  each,  becoming  inherent  in 
each,  makes  each  thing  good."  Plato,  Gorgias,  §  133. 

3  "  The  harmonious  unfolding  of  the  soul  is  the  supreme  end  of 
the  art  of  life."  Hoffding,  Problems  of  Philosophy  (Fisher,  transl.), 
p.  162. 

8  Socrates  speaking,  Phado,  §  99. 

*  Cf.  Mark  xii,  32-34. 


30  EDUCATION   AND    SOCIETY 

Forever  the  new  birth,  forever  regeneration,  forever 
natura,  being  born !  Such  is  education.  Its  limit  may 
no  man  set.1  Each  generation  manifests  the  superman. 
Always  comes  the  new  heaven  upon  a  new  earth.2 

"  Build  thee  more  stately  mansions,  O  my  soul, 
As  the  swift  seasons  roll ! 
Leave  thy  low-vaulted  past ! 
Let  each  new  temple,  nobler  than  the  last, 
Shut  thee  from  heaven  with  a  dome  more  vast, 

Till  thou  at  length  art  free, 
Leaving  thine  outgrown  shell  by  life's  unresting  sea."  8 

1  "  Eye  hath  not  seen,  nor  ear  heard,  neither  have  entered  into  the 
heart  of  man,  the  things  which  God  hath  prepared  for  them  that  love 
him."    Paul,  i  Corinthians  ii,  9. 

2  The  climax  of  each  succeeding  civilization  is  always  higher  than 
the  preceding.   No  dream  of  a  better  age  to  come  ever  is  as  beautiful 
in  comparison  with  the  old  as  is  the  actual  age  when  it  comes. 

»  Holmes,  The  Chambered  Nautilus. 


CHAPTER  II 

VALUES    OF   THE    SOCIAL    INSTITUTIONS 

Individuals  may  form  communities;  but  it  is  institutions  alone  that  can  create  a 
nation.  —  BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  (Earl  of  Beaconsfield),  Manchester  Speech,  1866. 

Upon  earth  is  no  power  that  may  be  compared  with  the  State.  —  POLLOCK,  Science  of 
Politics,  p.  126. 

Neither  race  nor  tradition,  nor  yet  the  actual  past  binds  the  American  to  his  country- 
man, but  rather  the  future  which  together  they  are  building.  —  MUNSTERBERG,  The 
Americans,  p.  5. 

THROUGHOUT  the  world  of  civilized  mankind,  society 
manifests,  in  greater  or  less  completeness,  eight  great 
social  institutions,  —  Property,  Family,  Church,  State, 
School,  Culture,  Business,  and  War.  From  many  thou- 
sand years  ago  in  Mesopotamia  and  in  Egypt,  until  now, 
these  institutions  have  been  gradually  evolving.  How 
ancient  they  are  in  India  and  in  China,  I  do  not  under- 
take to  say :  it  suffices  that  wherever  civilization  arises, 
there  arise  also  these  institutions  to  develop,  to  con- 
centrate, to  cherish,  and  to  destroy  the  customs  and 
interests  of  a  common  humanity.  Of  the  individual, 
whether  in  ancient  Chaldea,  in  mediaeval  Europe,  or 
in  modern  Japan  or  England  or  the  United  States,  it  is 
reasonable  to  say  that  the  largeness  of  his  life  depends 
mainly  upon  the  extent  of  his  identification  with  the  first 
six  institutions  and  realization  of  their  opportunities,  and 
of  his  understanding  of  the  last  two.  It  may  be  added 
that  to  withdraw  or  to  be  withdrawn  from  any  of  them 
is  at  the  peril  of  narrowness  and  anxiety  of  life. 

The  fact  that  in  historical  civilization  woman  has 
generally  been  property  rather  than  the  owner  of  pro- 
perty, practically  enslaved  by  marriage,  silent  in  the 
church,  unrecognized  in  the  state,  almost  never  at  school, 


32  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

without  knowledge  of  literature,  music,  or  art,  and  at 
best  but  a  servant  in  business,  tells  the  bitter  story  of 
the  vulgar  philosophy  of  humanity.  All  ignorant  men, 
like  some  intelligent  scientists,  believe  in  heredity  and 
doubt  environment  and  education.  They  are  fatalists. 
They  idolize  function  and  instinct.  They  are  routinists 
and  caste-worshipers.  The  belief  of  intelligent  men, 
excepting  only  a  few  of  the  scientists,  is  that  heredity 
is  not  fate,  that  indeed  heredity  may  be  modified  by 
education  and  by  other  environment,  and  that  these 
modifications  may  be  transmitted  to  offspring.  If  this 
belief  conforms  to  the  facts,  it  follows  from  the  facts 
that  to  the  progress  of  humanity  the  progress  of  woman 
by  participation  in  the  activities  of  religion,  of  govern- 
ment, and  of  education  must  be  advantageous.  • 

Doubtless,  to  the  completeness  of  this  argument,  some 
consideration  of  the  relative  influences  of  father  and  of 
mother  upon  the  child  is  desirable  ;  but  limitations  of  space 
and  the  digressive  nature  of  the  topic  forbid  full  treatment. 
The  weight  of  evidence  and  opinion  seems  to  be  that  (i)  in 
general,  the  boy  is  like  the  mother,  the  girl  like  the  father ; 
(2)  heredity  crosses  at  adolescence  so  that  the  adult  tends 
toward  the  parent  less  closely  resembled  in  childhood  ;  (3)  in 
skin,  flesh,  muscle,  the  child  resembles  the  mother  more 
than  the  father,  but  in  skeleton,  form,  and  general  structure 
resembles  the  father  more  than  the  mother;  (4)  mind  and 
character  are  not  inherited,  though  they  are  conditioned 
by  the  physical  inheritance ;  (5)  a  habit  acquired  by  one 
parent  is  scarcely  transmissible,  but  if  acquired  by  both 
parents  may  be  transmissible,  and,  if  acquired  continuously 
in  all  lines  for  three  or  more  generations,  will  probably  be 
transmitted.1 

1  Example.  The  son  or  daughter  of  two  parents,  four  grandparents, 
and  eight  great-grandparents,  all  highly  educated  and  sound  physically 
in  manhood  and  in  womanhood,  is  easily  educable,  probably  displaying 
almost  or  quite  without  suggestion  the  mental  and  moral  habits  taught 
to  his  or  her  ancestors.  Darwin,  Origin  of  Species,  launched  this  world- 
wide controversy.  Patten,  Heredity  and  Social  Progress,  chapter  ii. 


THE    SOCIAL    INSTITUTIONS  33 

To  the  correctness  of  this  belief,  the  progress  of  the 
United  States  since  the  prevalence  of  the  education 
of  women  is  fair  evidence.  In  the  face  of  the  incal- 
culably great  services  of  emancipated  women  to  their 
peoples  and  to  their  times,  —  Elizabeth,  Victoria,  Cath- 
erine, Marian  Evans,  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  —  the  vul- 
gar philosophy,  that  in  the  interests  of  humanity  woman 
may  rightly  be  limited  to  the  functions  of  child-bearing 
and  of  child-rearing,  seems  incredibly  ignorant.1  Such 
ignorance  is  part  and  parcel  of  human  nature  as  mani- 
fested in  a  considerable  portion  of  mankind  ;  and  with 
it,  educators  should  reckon.  It  may  be  that  because  of 
our  prosperity  most  of  us  tolerate  rather  than  advocate 
and  support  the  education  of  woman.  And  yet  in  our 
worst  years  of  business  depression,  though  we  may  talk 
of  closing  our  high  schools,  no  one  has  suggested  denying 
our  girls  equal  privileges  with  our  boys  in  elementary 
schools. 

The  fact  that  for  centuries,  throughout  Christendom 
and  all  heathendom  that  is  visited  by  its  missionaries, 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church  has  enforced  the  celibacy 
of  its  clergy,  removing  them  from  the  family  as  parents, 
and  has  limited  them  in  matters  of  property,  of  govern- 
ment, and  of  business,  does  not  prove  the  wisdom  of 
such  limitations,  but  raises  the  questions  whether  the 
individuals  have  not  been  sacrificed  to  the  institution, 
and  whether  the  institution  itself  has  not  thereby  been 
limited  in  its  own  success.2  It  may  be  that  the  redemp- 
tion of  the  world  requires  martyrs,  and  that  an  institu- 
tion must  be  maintained  to  train,  to  discipline,  and  to 
support  men  who  are  primarily  social  functionaries  and 
therefore  essentially  martyrs  ;  but  that  such  martyrdom 
is  a  manifest  mode  of  education  to  be  imitated  by  a 

1  Charlotte  Oilman,  Human   Work;   Woman   and  Economics,  both 
passim. 

2  Fisher,  History  of  the  Christian  Church,  pp.  63,  101,  173,  174,  183. 


34  EDUCATION   AND    SOCIETY 

considerable  portion  of  mankind  is  not  in  the  least  a 
debatable  question,  for  it  is  an  absolutely  necessary  con- 
dition of  human  society. 

The  man  who  has  inherited  property,  who  has  known 
the  care  of  parents  and  the  love  of  wife  and  children, 
who  has  participated  in  the  affairs  of  government  and 
of  religion,  who  has  benefited  by  the  school,  who  knows 
the  arts  of  culture,  and  who  has  tried  his  powers  in 
business  is  the  larger  for  all  his  experiences ;  and  no 
amount  of  experience  in  one  or  more  of  these  fields  but 
not  in  all  can  make  up  for  its  absence  in  others.  The 
woman,  likewise.  To  say  that  property  tends  to  idle- 
ness, family  to  aloofness,  government  to  corruption, 
religion  to  hypocrisy,  education  to  egotism,  culture  to 
conceit,  and  business  to  selfishness  is  but  to  say  that 
personal  motives  may  pervert  the  good  to  the  base.  To 
say  these  things  is  once  more  to  indulge  ourselves  in  an 
unhappy  and  vulgar  philosophy.1  Each  social  institution 
has  its  own  characteristic  motive ;  yet  grouping  the  in- 
stitutions is  possible.  Property,  Family,  Church,  State, 
School,  Business,2  Culture,  do,  indeed,  all  tend  to  the 
domestic  peace  of  society.  Civil  warfare  is  their  antitype. 
They  are  cosmos  ;  War,  chaos.  In  their  methods  and 
means,  Property,  Business,  War,  and  Culture  are  pri- 
marily personal,  while  Family,  Church,  State,  and  School 
are  primarily  social.  A  true  profession  serves  an  insti- 
tution by  devising  appropriate  methods  and  means  by 
which  it  may  perform  its  functions.  Society  is  the  trea- 
sury of  such  methods  and  means.  The  first  and  lesser 
institutions  content  themselves  with  servants,  to  each 


1  To  each  man,  his  philosophy.   In  the  degree  of  his  reflection  upon 
life,  that  philosophy  is  individual.  The  vulgar  philosophy  is  traditional, 
social,  superficial,  inconsistent,  and  plausible.    Wisdom  seeks  to  cleanse 
the  mind  of  all  such  philosophy. 

2  This  is  true  of  business  only  as  a  body  of  industries;  it  is  not  true 
of  business  as  competitive  selling  of  goods,  or  of  services. 


THE    SOCIAL   INSTITUTIONS  35 

institution  its  peculiar  class  :  Property  *  has  the  police- 
man ;  Business,  the  mechanic  and  the  clerk ;  War,  the 
soldier ;  Culture,  the  artist  and  the  expositor.  The  second 
and  greater  institutions  have  their  professions  :  Family 
has  the  physician ;  Religion,2  the  clergyman  ;  Govern- 
ment, the  lawyer ;  and  Education,  the  teacher. 

In  this  democratic  age,  when  humanity,  failing  to 
realize  its  ideals  of  liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity,  out 
of  defeat  has  risen  to  the  higher  ideals  of  justice,  inde- 
pendence, and  opportunity,  we  are  likely  to  be  deceived, 
by  the  excessive  authority  of  the  State,  into  thinking  it 
the  one  truly  universal  institution  of  society.  There  is 
to-day  little  into  which  the  modern  State  does  not  in- 
quire and  little  in  which  it  does  not  interfere.3  That  the 
State  is  usurping  functions  proper  only  to  other  social 
institutions  is  believed  by  many.  That  it  is  patronizing 
and  subordinating  the  School,  truckling  to  Property,  sac- 
rificing some  of  its  own  best  interests  to  Business,  modi- 
fying the  Family  (scarcely  improving  it  thereby),  ajid 
deliberately  isolating  itself  from  the  Church,  is  also  be- 
lieved by  many  :  to  no  slight  extent,  these  measures  are 
reducing  the  sphere  of  liberty.4 

In  their  motives  and  aims,  Church  and  School  are 
primarily  personal  ;  but  in  whatever  respects  Family 
and  State  are  personal,  they  are  in  danger  of  being 
vicious.  It  is  the  personal  legislation  of  the  State  that 
threatens  the  peace  and  the  welfare  of  general  society. 

1  Wealth  is  sometimes  considered  as  synonymous  with  Property-and- 
Business,  and  is  treated  as  one  social  institution.  The  appearance  of  being 
synonymous  is  mere  appearance ;  the  reality  of  difference  is  developed 
in  the  text  at  various  places. 

1  Church  and  Religion,  State  and  Government,  etc.,  are  not  synony- 
mous terms :  they  do,  however,  denote  the  same  matter,  while  affording 
somewhat  different  connotations. 

3  Mill,  Liberty  ;  Spencer,  Social  Statics. 

*  Butler,  "Principles  of  Education,"  Educational  Review,  June,  1902, 
p.  190,  discusses  the  aspects  of  this  matter  in  relation  to  the  University. 


36  EDUCATION   AND  SOCIETY 

The  State  has  legitimate  functions  ;  but  it  has  so  far 
overreached  these  functions  that  some  persons  fear  and 
others  hope l  that  it  may  become  the  sole  authoritative 
and  independent  social  institution.  No  doubt,  if  govern- 
ment is  the  dominant  concern  of  mankind,  then  society 
organized  as  a  State  and  performing  therein  all  social 
functions  would  be  logical ;  but  perhaps  religion  and 
education  are  quite  as  important  concerns,  requiring  for 
their  proper  development  and  full  service  to  mankind 
entire  freedom  from  the  State.  In  respect  to  the  School, 
it  may  indeed  prove  that  the  State  must  serve  and  not 
rule. 

The  characteristic  motive  of  Property  is  self-realiza- 
tion through  ownership  of  the  things  of  the  objective 
world.  Acquisition  is  its  accent.  Possession  is  its  em- 
phasis. Transmission  to  the  heirs  of  the  body  is  its 
climax.  The  slow  music  of  the  monotonous  melody  of 
Property  is  the  funeral  dirge  of  the  spirit.  To  desire 
to  be  rich  as  a  goal  is  significant  of  arrest  of  develop- 
ment, for  the  property  instinct  characterizes  later  child- 
hood ; 2  as  a  preparation  for  adolescence,  as  a  stage, 
marking  perhaps  high-water  level  of  some  adult  crea- 
ture forerunning  man,3  activity  in  property-getting  may 
be  commendable.  But  property  as  sole  or  chief  object 
in  life  becomes  a  stumbling-block,  whatever  may  be  the 
opinions  of  the  many  or  of  the  millionaire.4  Property 
founds  the  leisure  class,  which  is  at  once  the  treasury  of 
culture,  the  fortress  of  ethics,  and  the  palace  of  luxury, 
with  all  that  these  symbols  involve.  But  property  is 

1  Hillquit,  History  of  Socialism.  This,  it  may  be,  is  the  largest  ques- 
tion now  under  consideration  in  the  Western  world. 

*  Kirkpatrick,  Fundamentals  of  Child-Study,  p.  206 ;  Klein-France, 
"  Psychology  of  Ownership,"  Pedagogical  Seminary,  vol.  vi,  pp.  421-470. 

*  Hall,  Adolescence,  p.  45. 

4  "  A  man's  first  duty,"  said  President  Theodore  Roosevelt  in  a  speech 
in  1903,  "is  to  his  family;  his  next  to  the  State."  It  is  doubtful 
whether,  in  either  particular,  history  sustains  this  familiar  thesis. 


THE   SOCIAL   INSTITUTIONS  37 

only  the  necessity,  not  the  ambition  of  the  leisure  class,1 
whose  members  are  at  once  the  scum  and  the  cream  of 
society.  Thus  the  wheat  and  the  tares  are  growing,  to  be 
gathered  together  for  the  harvest.  A  life  without  pro- 
perty is  a  life  without  background.  A  life  with  property 
and  nothing  else  is  a  life  without  foreground.  Property 
is  the  right  to  exclude  all  others  from  use  of  the  thing 
owned.2  Originally  it  presumed  physical  power  to  resist 
all  others.  Now  it  necessitates  society  organized  poten- 
tially (covertly  but  ready  to  be  overtly)  to  serve  the  owner 
against  the  trespasser.3  Property  preceded  a  common 
humanity,  even  any  humanity,  for  animals  recognize  it. 
An  individual  without  property  in  civilization  is  a 
most  pathetic  object.  He  usually  seems  to  lack  true 
personality.  A  civilization  with  many  such  individuals 
stands  convicted  of  social  iniquity.  The  fact,  unremedied 
and  continued,  is  an  advertisement  of  the  public  guilt  of 
all.  Tolstoi  was  a  benefactor  of  humanity  when  he  drew 
upon  all  the  resources  of  his  superb  literary  art  to  -re- 
store to  health  a  truth  long  "  bedridden  in  the  dormitory 
of  the  soul"4  and  declared  year  after  year,  "Yes,  we 
will  do  almost  anything  for  the  poor  man,  anything  but 
get  off  his  back."5  Emerson  stated  the  principle  with 
perfect  clearness  in  respect  to  the  most  important  of  all 
kinds  of  property  when  he  said,  "  Whilst  another  man 
has  no  land,  my  title  to  mine,  your  title  to  yours,  is  at 
once  vitiated."6  But  this  is  just  as  true  of  every  other 
necessary  of  life.  Of  two  poor  women  in  a  tenement, 
one  with  bread,  the  other  with  no  bread,  let  us  learn 
once  more  the  doctrine  of  John,  "We  know  that  we 

1  Veblen,  Theory  of  the  Leisure  Class. 

2  Holmes,  Common  Law,  chapter  i. 

8  The  right  of  property  issues  out  of  the  power  of  one  class  over  all 
others.     Gumplowicz,  Sociology,  p.  179. 
*  Coleridge,  Aids  to  Reflection. 
6  Quoted,  Huntington,  Philanthropy  and  Morality. 
8  "  Man  the  Reformer,"  Nature,  Addresses,  and  Lectures,  p.  234. 


38  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

have  passed  from  death  unto  life,  because  we  love  the 
brethren.  He  that  loveth  not  his  brother  abideth  in 
death."  *  "  Behold  !  No  land  like  this  barren  and  naked 
land  of  poverty  could  show  the  moral  geology  of  the 
world."2  This,  however,  is  no  reason  for  continuing 
poverty  forever  in  the  world.  It  is  rather  a  very  good 
reason  for  listening  to  the  revelations  of  poverty  con- 
cerning morals,  and  for  discontinuing  the  causes  of  pov- 
erty so  far  as  possible.  These  causes  appear  to  form  a 
vicious  circle ;  they  may  be  cited  as  ignorance,  fraud,  and 
disease.3  The  circle  can,  however,  be  broken  by  govern- 
ment, when  it  destroys  privilege ;  by  science,  when  it 
prevents  disease  and  hastens  the  cure ;  and  by  educa- 
tion, when  it  enlightens  ignorance  and  develops  power. 

The  characteristic  motive  of  the  Family  is  self- 
sacrifice.  The  ancient  patriarch  owned  his  sons  and 
daughters-in-law  and  all  their  descendants.  Out  of  this 
ownership  of  consort  and  of  lineal  descendants  in  the 
male  line  (and  unmarried  daughters)4  grew  the  modern 
family,  as  we  know  it  in  Europe  and  in  America.  In  the 
Family,  the  individual  foregoes  his  own  economic  advan- 
tage. Property  is  in  common  use,  even  though  the  title 
be  in  the  head.5  For  the  sake  of  his  kin,  the  individual 

1  i  Epistle  Hi,  14. 

2  Phillips  Brooks,  Sermons,  5th  series,  p.  166. 
8  Cf.  Ross,  Social  Control,  p.  382. 

*  The  daughters  at  marriage  took  their  dowry  as  their  share  in  the 
general  family  property.  Maine  (Pollock,  ed.  New  York,  tenth  edition), 
Ancient  Law,  p.  218. 

8  To  the  historian  familiar  with  anthropology,  the  modern  statute  laws 
giving  the  married  woman  control  of  her  own  property,  granting  alimony 
to  divorced  wives,  and  preserving  very  limited  rights  to  husbands  in  their 
deceased  wives'  estates,  and  the  laws  relating  to  wills,  are  invasions  of 
the  sacred  precincts  of  Property  and  of  Family,  are  declarations  that 
individuals  are  greater  than  these  primary  social  institutions,  and  are 
challenges  (perhaps  presumptuous  and  perilous)  of  the  very  method  by 
which  modern  society  has  come  into  being.  Cf.  Howard,  History  of  Mat- 
rimonial Institutions,  vol.  iii,  chapter  xviii. 


THE   SOCIAL   INSTITUTIONS  39 

is  glad  to  imperil  life  itself.  Self-denial  for  the  sake  of 
others  in  the  family  is  so  common  as  to  pass  unnoticed. 
This  denial  attains  often  the  dignity  of  self-sacrifice, 
occasionally  the  glory  of  martyrdom  in  life  and  in  death. 
In  the  history  of  the  Family,  we  may  trace  the  steps  by 
which  man  has  ascended  to  humanity. l 

As  the  secondary  purpose  of  Property  is  to  secure 
to  posterity  wealth  and  its  accompanying  advantages  in 
material  civilization,  so  the  secondary  purpose  of  the 
Family  is  to  secure  to  posterity  culture  and  the  spiritual 
civilization.  Older  than  Church  and  State,  Property  and 
Family  underlie  all  religious  and  political  laws,  customs, 
ceremonies,  and  traditions.  Possession  and  title,  mar- 
riage, and  parental  and  filial  obligation  are  stronger  than 
worship,  ceremonial,  and  religion, — stronger  than  power, 
politics,  and  government.2  We  may  liken  family  affec- 
tion to  atomic  affinity,  religious  association  to  molecular 
attraction,  and  patriotism  to  mass  gravitation.  In  the 
day  of  social  dissolution  and  anarchy,  only  the  Family 
endures,  and  the  last  fight  is  for  the  land  and  the  home. 

The  personal  motive  inculcated  by  the  Church  is  self- 
abnegation.  Reverence  for  the  Higher  Power  is  the 
melody  of  the  religious  life.  The  origin  of  the  Church 
was  in  the  convenience  of  differentiating  the  religious 
functions  of  the  patriarch  and  of  integrating  them  in  the 
priestly  office.3  It  scarcely  appears  that  the  primitive 
man  was  a  worshiper  of  his  gods  and  devils  ;  but  out  of 
the  savage  fears  and  superstitions 4  of  primitive  man 
grew  the  ceremonial  rites  and  worship  of  the  barbarian. 
As  guardian  of  the  ritual  and  of  the  ceremonial  arose 
the  priest ;  and  with  the  priest  appeared  the  Church. 
Isolated  from  heavy  labor,  from  the  hunt,  and  from  war, 

1  Drummond,  Ascent  of  Man,  chapter  vii. 

2  Cf.  Sophocles,  Antigone. 

8  Spencer,  Principles  of  Sociology,  vol.  iii ;  Maspero,  Egypt  (transl. 
Sayce-McClure),  vol.  ii,  chapter  i. 
4  Fiske,  Idea  of  God,  p.  166. 


40  EDUCATION   AND    SOCIETY 

the  priest  observed,  thought,  acquired  knowledge,  and 
became  wise  beyond  other  men.  He  saw  that  the  world 
is  mystery,  and  learned  the  power  of  mystery  by  partly 
resolving  it  into  knowledge.1  This  process,  begun  seven 
thousand  years  ago,2  may  be  observed  to-day,  when  a 
man  arises  from  among  ignorant  manual  laborers  to 
become  priest,  preacher,  statesman,  or  other  scholar.  He 
feels  his  littleness  in  the  immensity  and  the  eternity  of 
the  universe  of  God ;  and  teaches  others  so.  Forever  the 
burden  of  his  sermon  is  self-abnegation.  "  Be  ye  recon- 
ciled." "Not  my  will,  but  Thine  be  done."  "Thy  will 
be  done  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven."  Such  has  been  the 
revelation  proclaimed  in  every  age  by  the  prophets  and 
the  priests.  It  is  a  mystic  and  esoteric  doctrine  ;  but  its 
power,  its  influences,  and  its  results  have  been  visible  in 
all  the  recorded  history  of  mankind.  It  has  compelled 
introspection,  made  revery,  silence,  and  solitude  sacred, 
immeasurably  dignified  the  individual,  and  evolved  the 
conscience  of  man,  which,  though  indefinable,  is  neverthe- 
less undeniable  and  tends  to  universality.  By  religion, 
the  creature  man  is  bound  directly  and  intimately  to  his 
creating  God.  The  real  savage,  before  the  days  of  Pro- 
perty, of  Family,  and  of  Religion,  lived  a  unit  upon  the 
surface  of  Nature.  Property  gave  man  largeness  through 
self-realization,  while  the  Family  gave  him  permanence 
through  a  recognized  continuity  of  generation,  conse- 
quent upon  the  social  relations  of  blood-kindred.  The 
Church  gave  man  worth  by  developing,  according  to  its 
dogmas,  consciousness  of  sonship  to  the  Power  of  whose 
thought  this  world  is  but  a  passing  form.8 

1  Titchener,  Outlines  of  Psychology,  chapter  i. 

2  Mitchell,  The  Past  in  the  Present.   Without  a  knowledge  of  this 
theory,  as  expressed  by  historians  and  by  philosophers,  and  as  displayed 
in  a  multitude  of  modern  facts,  the  present  civilization  is  scarcely  under- 
standable. 

8  Luke,  Acts,  quoting  Paul,  "  For  in  him  we  live  and  move  and  have 
our  being." 


THE   SOCIAL   INSTITUTIONS  41 

Through  self-surrender,  man  acquires  dignity.  "  Who- 
soever will  save  his  life  shall  lose  it,"  said  Jesus.1  It  is 
scientifically  demonstrable.  The  discovery  of  this  truth 
is  the  new  birth.2  "  Ye  must  be  born  again,"  said  He  to 
Nicodemus.  By  this  birth,  self  becomes,  in  sympathy, 
coextensive  with  the  cosmos,3  securing  thereby  moral 
sanity,  and  death  ceases  to  have  the  meaning  of  fear  or 
of  regret.  The  man  who  really  loses  himself  gains  the 
whole  world.4  It  is  the  moral  of  all  heroisms  and  martyr- 
doms. 

"  What  excites  and  interests  the  lookers-on  at  life,  what  the 
romances  and  the  statues  celebrate,  and  the  grim  civic  mon- 
uments recall,  is  the  everlasting  battle  of  the  powers  of  light 
with  those  of  darkness,  —  with  heroism  reduced  to  its  bare 
chance,  yet  ever  and  anon  snatching  victory  from  the  jaws  of 
death." 6 

Younger  than  the  Church,  evolving  out  of  Church, 
Family,  and  Property,  arose  the  State  with  its  double 
function,  external  and  internal,  like  the  obverse  and 
the  reverse  of  a  shield.  One  function  of  the  State  is  to 
protect  a  particular  society  of  men,  women,  and  children 
with  their  particular  forms  of  religion,  of  marriage,  and 
of  property,  from  all  other  societies.  In  respect  to  this 
function,  the  State  is  the  organizer  of  defensive  war.6  It 
is  an  interesting  instance  of  differentiation  and  of  in- 
tegration.7 In  organizing  aggressive  war,  the  State  is 

1  Matthew  xvi,  25. 

2  John  iii,  4. 

8  Naden,  Induction  and  Dedtiction  {Hydo-Idealism\  p.  174. 

*  The  man  who,  in  the  popular  sense,  "  loses  himself  "  in  vice,  does  not 
really  lose  himself  at  all.  He  is  enslaved  to  self,  degraded  to  that  wor- 
ship, and  at  last  lost  from  the  world  in  the  sole  "society"  of  himself. 
Dante  showed  the  liar  thus  lost  from  the  world  in  lowest  hell  upon  a 
pinnacle  of  ice. 

6  James,  Talks  on  Psychology  and  Life's  Ideals,  p.  272. 

6  Bluntschli,  Theory  of  the  State,  Oxford  transl.,  p.  320. 

7  It  is  unnecessary  to  do  more  than  to  acknowledge  my  obligation  to 


42  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

usually  acting  in  the  sole  interest  of  Property.  Land- 
hunger,  proper  or  artificial,  has  set  in  motion  most  wars. 
The  army  and  the  navy  exist  for  aggression,  while  the 
militia  and  the  marine  exist  for  defense. 

Beginning  as  a  means  to  preserve  for  a  society  its 
peculiar  institutions,  the  State  has  grown  into  a  machine 
for  modifying  and  even  controlling  and  directing  them. 
Both  property  and  family,  both  religion  and  education, 
both  culture  and  business,  have  assumed  voluntarily  or 
involuntarily  unnatural  forms  because  of  the  force  and 
influence  of  political  government.  In  the  period  of 
nation-making  intolerance  is  a  political  necessity.1  The 
State  has  meddled,  not  always  from  necessity,  in  all  the 
various  affairs  of  human  society.2 

The  State  has  several  conspicuous  weaknesses.  It  has  no 
voluntarily  and,  in  consequence,  liberally  granted  means  of 
support ;  therefore,  it  is  inadequately  supplied  with  wealth 
for  its  several  needs,  especially  for  its  need  of  superior  talents 
to  be  employed  in  its  service.  In  its  democratic  forms,  it  has 
no  permanence  either  of  personnel  or  of  specific  traditions,8 
changing  its  men  and  its  purposes  as  public  opinion  wills.4 
Every  other  social  institution  —  Family,  Church,  School, 
State,  Culture,  War  — is  finally  dependent  upon  either 
Property  or  Business  for  revenue.6  The  State  has  felt  itself 

Spencer,  Principles  of  Sociology,  etc.,  for  the  theory.  "  Evolution  is  a 
continuous  change  from  indefinite,  incoherent  homogeneity  to  definite, 
coherent  heterogeneity  of  structure  and  function,  through  successive 
differentiations  and  integrations."  Rogers,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  510. 
This  is  a  more  compact  statement  than  is  anywhere  offered  by  Spencer 
himself. 

1  Seeley,  Introduction  to  Political  Science,  p.  137. 

2  The  necessity  of  the  State  in  respect  to  property  is  solely  to  derive 
revenues  from  it.    The  State,  however,  has  undertaken  to  create  many 
forms  of  property,  such  as  corporations,  franchises,  titles,  mortgages, 
money. 

*  Bryce,  American  Commonwealth,  vol.  ii,  p.  572. 

*  Oliver,  Alexander  Hamilton,  p.  164. 

6  Government  is  founded  upon  property.  Webster,  Speech  at  Plymouth, 
1820. 


THE   SOCIAL   INSTITUTIONS  43 

forced  or  has  deliberately  chosen  upon  many  occasions,  in 
order  to  secure  large  funds  for  its  support,  either  to  bribe  or 
to  overpower  Property  or  Business  to  meet  its  demands.1 

Civilization  has  been  the  scene  of  many  struggles 
between  the  eight  major  social  institutions.  In  the  first 
decades  of  the  twentieth  century,  the  terrific  struggle 
for  mastery  is  between  the  State  and  Business  for  the 
control  of  society:  the  other  institutions  are  standing 
by  as  little  more  than  onlookers.  The  Church,  indeed, 
and  the  Family,  are  disintegrating  before  our  eyes : 
neither  has  sufficient  surplus  vitality  to  take  part  in  the 
struggle.  Culture,  with  its  overlord,  the  University, 
stands  aloof.  Whether  its  revenues  come  from  govern- 
ment or  from  property,  the  University  cares  but  little 
save  in  so  far  as  its  own  academic  freedom  is  involved.2 

The  School  has  joined  the  State  in  its  struggle  for 
supremacy,  and  in  return  has  secured  the  support  of 
the  State  for  its  own  maintenance.  This  singular  alli- 
ance has  resulted  in  making  the  School  almost  wholly 

1  Of  bribes  to  business,  many  protective  tariff  laws  have  been  exam- 
ples.   Of  threats  to  overthrow  Property  as  a  social  institution,  "  con- 
demnation proceedings  "  are  examples.    In  a  certain  sense,  every  tax, 
direct  or  indirect,  is  confiscatory.    Of  course,  both  Business  and  Pro- 
perty have  methods  and  means  of  revenge,  familiar  enough  to  all  social 
observers. 

2  It  is  a  fair  question  whether  there  is  greater  academic  freedom  in 
the  State  University  or  in  the  "  endowed  "  or  Property  University.  There 
is,  however,  no  little  evidence  that  a  University  that  draws  its  revenues 
directly  from  Business  (as  by  fees  or  current  donations)  and  a  University 
that  draws  its  revenues  from  the  Church  (mediating  between  Culture  and 
Property  or  Business)  are  both  certain  not  to  have  genuine  and  complete 
academic  freedom.    Whether  the  University  draws  its  millions  of  annual 
revenue  directly  from  Property  ("invested  funds  "),  or  from  Business 
(gifts),  or  from  the  State  ("  grants  "  or  taxes),  or  from  the  Church  makes 
no  difference  in  the  amount  of  the  burden  thereby  imposed  upon  so- 
ciety ;  but  it  makes  a  very  great  deal  of  difference  to  the  University  itself 
because  the  mediating  persons  who  collect  the  revenues  affect,  in  the 
degrees  of  their  power,  and  in  accordance  with  their  social  obligations, 
the  policy  of  expenditure. 


44  EDUCATION    AND   SOCIETY 

dependent  upon  the  State  *  and  in  emphasizing  in  all 
school  courses  the  aim  of  preparation  for  citizenship  as 
paramount,  which  in  sound  social  philosophy  it  certainly 
is  not. 

The  American  State  has  chosen  to  assume  for  the 
public  school  the  tremendous  responsibility  of  Ameri- 
canizing an  annual  number  of  immigrants  ranging  from 
one  to  two  per  cent  of  the  entire  old  population.  To 
Americanize  means  to  adapt  to  all  our  institutions, — 
marriage,  religion,  property,  business,  military  service, 
as  well  as  education  and  culture.  Such  an  assumption 
amounts  almost  to  a  usurpation  of  all  the  functions 
proper  to  Society  itself.  This  assumption  illustrates  per- 
fectly the  arrogance  of  the  modern  democratic  State, 
falsely  conceiving  itself  to  be  coterminous,  synonymous, 
yes,  identical  with  Society.2  In  a  mad  delusion,  State- 
socialism  arises,  in  which  a  State-Society  is  conceived,  a 
far  more  dreadful  notion  than  the  historic  State-Church. 
No  such  terror  can,  however,  come  to  pass,  for  the  world 
sees  age  after  age  not  combination  and  consolidation 
with  coincident  integration  of  the  whole,  but  variation 
and  differentiation  with  coincident  integration  of  the 
parts.  The  State  will  not  synthesize  all  institutions  into 
one  State-Society,  but  rather  will  Society  itself  produce 
yet  other  institutions  to  reduce  the  State  to  smaller  pre- 
tensions and  to  greater  efficiency  in  its  proper  field.  The 
entire  sociological  history  of  mankind  is  a  prophecy  of 
farther  specializations  of  social  function  with  coincident 
reductions  of  the  older  institutions. 

Vast  as  the  State  is  to-day,  great  as  its  power  is,  it  is 
nevertheless  a  secondary  and  subordinate  institution. 

1  "To  the  public  (State)  schools  goes  $225,000,000  annually;  to  all 
other  schools,  $40,000,000  ;  to  universities  of  all  kinds,  $10,000,000  for 
current  expenses.  We  need  five  times  as  much.'^  Eliot,  More  Money  for 
the  Public  Schools. 

1  Pollock,  Science  of  Politics,  p.  125;  Bluntschli,  Theory  of  the  State, 
pp.  17,  92  et  seq.  ;  Le  Rossignol,  Orthodox  Socialism. 


THE   SOCIAL   INSTITUTIONS  45 

Property,  Family,  and  Church,  —  private  wealth,  the 
home,  and  religion,  —  in  the  persons  of  lords,  of  patri- 
archs, and  of  priests,  conspired  to  build  the  State,  to 
make  its  princes  and  its  laws.  To  this  day,  in  every 
Nation  sufficiently  civilized  to  have  orderly  government, 
Property,  Family,  and  Church  manipulate  government  to 
their  own  ends.1 

Culture  antedates  Business  by  many  a  century,  for  it 
began  with  language  and  the  industrial  arts.  As  a  social 
institution,  Culture  finds  its  apotheosis  in  the  university; 
but  it  requires  many  other  modes  for  its  expression. 
The  museum,  the  library,  the  newspaper,  the  magazine, 
the  book,  the  picture,  the  hospital,  the  factory,  and 
the  farm  are  essentially  the  products  of  Culture.  The 
fine  arts,  however  broadly  we  may  use  the  term,  are 
but  exhibits  of  its  power.  Man  finds  in  music,  poetry, 
painting,  architecture,  a  relief  for  self-expression,  a  joy 
of  being,  a  meaning  to  life,  that  nothing  else  can  give.2 

1  Superficially  this  may  not  appear  true.    By  franchises  and  by  tariff 
laws,  the  State  puts  many  men  in  the  way  of  wealth ;  but  it  does  so  at 
the  dictates  of  Property.    The  political  power  of  the  millionaire  is  pro- 
verbial.   The  monogamous  Family  is  a  sacred  idea  :  despite  divorce  and 
Mormonism,  the  governments  of  this  Nation  and  of  the  States  dare 
not,  never  even  consider,  legalizing  bigamy,  polygamy,  and  polyandry. 
The  Family,  not  the  State,  invented  the  civil  marriage  ;  and  did  so 
because  of  the  weakness  of  the  Church,  which  could  not  everywhere 
solemnize  the  ecclesiastical  marriage.    Free  love,  adultery,  and  prostitu- 
tion endure  because  the  work  of  the  Family  in  developing  the  human 
being  out  of  the  animal  is  not  yet  complete ;  atavisms  will  recur,  and 
degeneration  as  yet  continues  to  accompany  civilization.    More  recon- 
dite, yet  not  less  certain,  is  the  subordination  of  even  the  American  State 
to  the  Church.    In  this  New  World,  religious  conflicts  have  dictated  reli- 
gious toleration  to  save  both  religion  and  society.   (See  Gumplowicz, 
Outlines  of  Sociology,  p.  155,  trans,  by  Moore.   Also  Chancellor-Hewes, 
The  United  States,  vol.  i,  p.  450.)    Therefore,  the  Church  itself  has  com- 
manded, and  still  commands,  the  separation  of  Church  and  State.   At  the 
same  time,  it  compels  the  State  to  withhold  taxation  of  ecclesiastical  pro- 
perty while  affording  police  protection  and  maintaining  title.    (Schaff, 
Church  and  State.) 

2  Henderson,  Education  and  the  Larger  Life,  p.  80. 


46  EDUCATION    AND   SOCIETY 

Culture,  then,  is  a  reality  that  gives  beauty  to  morals 
and  content  to  existence.  True  culture  is  the  solvent 
of  the  confusions  of  egoism  and  altruism.  The  motive  of 
Culture  is  self-development ;  but  its  beginning  is  social 
service  and  its  outcome  is  social  usefulness.  Culture  is 
not  synonymous  with  education,  for  its  speech  is  of 
amenities  and  of  graces  rather  than  of  powers  and  of 
insights.  It  is  education  raised  to  the  second  power. 
When  culture  is  founded  upon  education,  it  possesses 
dignity ;  when  education  is  crowned  with  culture,  it 
possesses  charm. 

An  economic  analysis  discovers  Culture  in  its  rela- 
tions with  Property  and  with  Business.  The  creations  of 
Art  become  the  things  of  Property  through  the  process 
of  exchange,  which  is  the  essence  of  Business.  In  these 
times,  many  of  us  imagine  that  the  farmer  raises  wheat, 
the  miner  digs  iron,  the  potter  moulds  clay,  the  me- 
chanic builds  the  machine,  the  weaver  makes  cloth,  the 
painter  creates  the  picture,  the  author  writes  the  book, 
the  surgeon  binds  the  wound,  the  lawyer  pleads  his  case, 
that  all  artists  or  artisans  do  their  work,  in  order  that 
Business  may  resound  upon  the  earth.  It  is  a  strange, 
unhistoric,  unphilosophic  delusion.  It  is  the  modern 
temporary  insanity.  Such  is  the  transcendence  of  Busi- 
ness, the  last  survival  of  private  war  upon  earth.1 

Of  this  temporary  unsoundness  of  the  social  judg- 
ment, due  largely  to  the  unprecedented  and  marvelous 
augmentation  of  economic  activity,  itself  the  effect  of 
political  freedom,  which  in  turn  is  the  effect  of  religious 
freedom,2  the  symbol  is  money,  the  medium  of  modern 
exchanges  of  property,  real  and  personal.  We  vainly 
imagine  that  money  buys  anything  and  everything ;  but 
when  we  undertake  to  buy  the  things  and  the  experiences 

1  Webb,  History  of  Trades-Unionism,  p.  78. 

1  "  Freedom  is  the  heart  of  commerce."  Colbert  in  Comptes  Rendus 
de  r/nstitut,  xxxix,  93. 


THE   SOCIAL   INSTITUTIONS  47 

that  are  really  worth  while,  this  imagining  abruptly  ends 
in  the  shock  of  the  discovery  that  only  a  few  things  are 
bought  and  sold.  Of  services  of  man  to  man,  money 
buys  but  few ;  and  of  these  few  services,  money  buys 
almost  none  that  are  important.  The  economic  world  is 
really  much  restricted.  In  many  instances,  where  we 
seem  to  be  buying  services  we  are  in  fact  but  merely 
repaying  to  the  servant  the  cost  of  the  services  to  him 
in  order  that  he  may  live  by  his  generous  labor.  In 
truth,  in  this  modern  age,  honest  services  are  scarcely 
to  be  bought  at  all.  Even  in  the  case  of  goods  and  of 
lands,  by  no  means  all  the  exchanges  are  in  the  way  of 
business.  Men  do  not  sell  household  furniture  and  sup- 
plies to  their  wives  and  children.  The  proposition  to 
pay  salaries  to  mothers  for  the  care  that  they  take  of 
their  own  children  is  but  one  phase  of  the  modern  un- 
soundness  of  judgment  upon  most  economic  matters.1 
The  delusions  of  Business  have  made  not  a  few  mad.2 

Culture  is  to  civilization  what  the  intellect  is  to  the 
mind  :  Religion  is  the  heart  of  civilization  ;  Government, 
the  will. 

Last  and  least  of  the  social  institutions  is  Business, 
which  reflects  the  warfare  rather  than  the  peace  of 
humanity,  and  tells  the  story  of  the  past  rather  than  pre- 
dicts the  future.  It  is  possible  to  conceive  a  civilization 
without  war,  and  without  business  in  its  strict  economic 
sense.  The  theory  of  Business  does  not  comport  with 
the  fundamental  morality  of  mankind. 

In  order  to  make  this  theory,  as  expressed  in  its  vari- 
ous maxims,  comport  with  the  tenth  commandment  of 

1  This  proposition  has  repeatedly  appeared  in  various  current  period- 
icals for  women  and  the  home.   Charlotte  Oilman,  Woman  and  Economics. 

2  One  of  these  delusions  is  that  money  values  are  competent  mea- 
sures ;  e.  g.  that  an  income  of  a  million  dollars  a  year  represents  in  the 
recipient  a  thousand  times  as  much  worth  to  the  world  as  an  income  of 
a  thousand  dollars  a  year;  and  this  irrespective  of  its  sources  and  of  its 
expenditure. 


48  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

the  Decalogue  and  with  the  Golden  Rule,  it  is  necessary 
to  define  many  terms  and  to  refine  the  general  opinion 
of  many  familiar  practices.  This  tenth  commandment 
begins,  "Thou  shalt  not  covet,"  and  the  Golden  Rule 
is,  "Do  unto  others  as  ye  would  that  they  should  do 
unto  you,"  while  the  essential  theory  of  Business  is, 
"  Get  for  what  you  have  more  than  its  cost :  that  is,  sell 
at  a  profit."  To  "  make  money  "  is  to  get  more  for  less  : 
the  added  "more"  is  "something  for  nothing."  In  the 
history  of  the  world,  nearly  every  fortune  has  been 
made  by  gains  from  others.  The  established  business 
maxims  tell  the  story  :  "  Buy  from  weak  holders  :  that 
is,  from  those  who  must  sell."  "Buy  cheap,  sell  dear." 
"  Let  the  buyer  beware  (Caveat  emptor)" 

Morality,  however,  is  gaining  upon  business,  as  it  is  upon 
warfare.  We  now  generally  recognize  as  usury,  and  therefore 
immoral  as  well  as  illegal,  interest  above  six  per  cent.  The  law 
enforces  commissions  of  only  five  per  cent  upon  sales.  The 
man  who  literally  gives  nothing  and  gets  something  is  "ob- 
taining money  under  false  pretenses,"  and  may  be  liable  crim- 
inally. Moreover,  Business,  like  War,  is  becoming  organized, 
ordered,  and  professionalized.  We  have  put  an  end  to  private 
war  and  to  the  overt  acts  of  private  feud  ;  and  it  is  quite  within 
the  limits  of  possibility  that  we  may  bring  to  an  end  private 
business  and  private  gain.  The  corporation  is  a  limitation 
of  private  enterprise ;  it  is  quite  possible  that  in  the  future 
corporations,  as  democratic  as  the  modern  churches  or  the 
modern  governments,  may  control  economic  life.  And  it  is 
much  more  likely  that  this  will  take  place  than  that  the  State 
will  extend  much  more  broadly  than  now  its  illogical  and 
unnatural  economic  functions,  which,  as  should  be  antici- 
pated, it  usually  performs  so  poorly. 

Upon  this  analysis,  it  is  obvious  that  the  pupil  who  is 
to  understand  modern  life  at  as  early  an  age  as  is  appro- 
priate must  secure  some  knowledge  of,  some  insight 
into  the  meaning  of,  these  great  social  institutions.  But 


THE   SOCIAL   INSTITUTIONS  49 

what  is  the  meaning  of  War  ?  What  knowledge  of  War 
can  be  of  any  possible  use  even  as  a  stage  in  the  edu- 
cation of  a  boy  or  girl,  not  to  say  as  a  feature  of  en- 
during culture?1  The  history  of  the  mechanics  of  war 
is  convincing  evidence  that  war  will  cease.  War  is  con- 
ditioned by  ignorance :  only  the  man  who  cannot  by 
argument  convince  his  enemy  desires  to  slay  him.  War 
is  conditioned  by  selfishness  ;  only  the  man  who  cannot 
by  service  get  what  he  desires  of  his  neighbor  thinks 
to  rob  him.  The  first  wars  were  between  families ;  the 
next  between  clans  ;  the  next  between  communities  ; 
then  followed  wars  between  tribes,  nations,  peoples, 
empires.  To-day,  from  San  Francisco  to  Boston  there 
is  organized  and,  let  us  hope,  permanent  peace.  War  is 
the  true  suicide.  "  He  that  takes  the  sword  shall  perish 
by  the  sword."  2  The  families  and  children  of  soldiers 
are  few.  Thus  evil  cuts  itself  down.3 

1  It  may  be  necessary  to  set  apart  a  certain  number  of  youths  to  be 
instructed  (not  educated)  in  the  theory  and  tactics  of  war.    It  may  per- 
haps be  desirable  as  a  military  precaution  to  maintain  a  militia  and  even 
high  school  and  college  cadets.    There  is  perhaps  some  physical  train- 
ing in  the  manual  of  arms.    But  war  as  manslaughter,  real  war,  and  the 
spirit  of  real  war  are  all  absolutely  an ti- educational. 

2  Cf.  Jeremiah,  Lamentations  xv,  2;  xlii,  u. 

8  Franklin  said,  "  There  never  was  a  good  war  or  a  bad  peace." 
(Letter  to  Josiah  Quincy,  September  II,  1773.)  Of  course,  no  war  can 
be  righteous  upon  both  sides.  Even  the  righteous  side  is  likely  soon  to 
develop  such  a  pitch  of  rage  as  to  cease  to  be  righteous  in  spirit.  "  Ven- 
geance is  mine,  I  will  repay,"  saith  the  Lord.  Paul,  Romans  xii,  19, 
referring  to  Deuteronomy  xxxiii,  35. 

A  defensive  war  may  be  righteous.  No  offensive  war  possibly  can  be. 
The  arguments  in  defense  of  the  American  aggression  in  the  Spanish- 
American  War  all  proceed  from  the  postulate  that  there  was  no  other 
way  to  put  to  an  end  the  atrocities  of  the  Spanish  rulers  ;  whereas,  there 
was,  in  fact,  an  easy  way :  purchase  of  the  island  of  Cuba  at  any  price 
rather  than  renewal  of  the  lust  of  blood  in  Americans.  War  does  not 
become  us.  We  are  the  first  of  the  true  world-peoples.  We  are  what 
the  Romans  meant  to  be.  But  what  we  gained  in  pride,  we  lost  in  character 
and  in  reputation  when  as  a  nation  we  asserted  that  the  end  justified  the 
means.  Cf.  Plutarch,  The  Slow  Punishment  «j  the  Wicked. 


50  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

To  charge  war  to  ignorance  is  fallacious.  To  charge 
anything  to  ignorance  is  to  argue  on  the  theory  that 
human  nature  is  a  vacuum.  Such  an  argument  is  built 
on  negation,  and  circles  about  in  nothing.  In  truth,  war 
is  conditioned  by  ignorance  of  facts  and  of  principles 
because  the  heart  of  man  is  full  of  desires ;  to  their  ac- 
complishment, he  is  willing  to  proceed  directly,  whereas 
the  best  way,  often  the  only  way,  to  accomplish  them,  is 
to  proceed  indirectly,  that  is  to  find  a  tool 1  or  a  method.2 
The  thief  desires  property  and  steals  it,  while  the  honest 
man,  desiring  it,  gives  services  or  goods  in  exchange  for 
it.  At  the  cost  of  bloodshed,  of  hatred,  and  of  revitalized 
estrangement,  war  is  always  wrong,  even  when  the  end 
proposed  is  good. 

"  Thou  shalt  not  kill "  is  a  universal  law :  not  even  for 
Church  or  State  may  one  kill  righteously  another  man,  save, 
of  course,  in  defense.  Even  the  killing  of  a  murderer  by  the 
State  in  punishment  of  his  crime  is  no  longer  to  be  approved, 
for  both  Christian  ethics  and  scientific  pedagogics  show  that  it 
is  possible  to  redeem  the  criminal  from  the  sinful  conditions 
of  his  soul.  He  may  be  "  born  again  :  "  educated  out  of  his 
past :  so  that  his  sins  are  literally  forgiven,  and  he  will  go  and 
sin  no  more.* 

Wars  are  crimes  in  the  history  of  nations.  The  no- 
tions of  war  in  the  minds  of  a  civilized  people  are  echoes 
of  the  past,  regurgitations  of  ancient  passions,  reverbera- 
tions of  ancestral  rages,  telling  of  the  pit  from  which  we 
were  digged.  They,  become  effective  only  when  the 
people,  from  want  of  intelligence  and  goodness,  despair  of 
accomplishing  some  purpose  in  righteousness.4 

1  See  Ward,  Psychic  Factors  in  Civilization,  chapter  xxix. 

2  Method  =  way  through,  a  main  traveled  road,  juerek  656s- 

1  Criminals  are  either  sane  or  insane.  The  sane  are  educable  and 
therefore  redeemable.  Criminology  and  Pedagogy  have  many  points  of 
common  interest  and  bearing.  The  insane  may  be  curable  or  chronic. 
Their  cases  are  pathological. 

4  Longfellow,  The  Arsenal;  Bloch,  The  Future  of  War. 


THE    SOCIAL    INSTITUTIONS  51 

War  as  an  institution  has  its  schools,  its  arsenals,  its 
factories.  It  maintains  the  cult  of  military  drill  and  of 
naval  display.  It  chants  a  pseudo-patriotism  dangerous 
to  the  real,  which  overclouds  it,  almost  suppresses  it, 
sometimes  makes  any  patriotism  seem  callous,  absurd, 
and  base. 

Property,  Family,  Church,  State,  School,  and  Culture  are 
all  good,  entirely  good.  But  Business  and  War,  though  ne- 
cessary until  now,  and  apparently  for  no  little  time  to  come, 
and  therefore  good  as  mediate  institutions,  have  many  evil 
features  and  influences.  The  good  institutions  should  be  set 
to  the  redemption  of  society  from  War  and  from  Business  by 
cultivating  in  their  practices  what  is  good  and  by  eliminating 
and  suppressing  what  is  evil.  Whatever  is  good  works  for  the 
welfare  of  man  and  of  men  ;  whatever  is  evil  injures  humanity 
itself  and  all  the  individuals  concerned. 

Business  and  War  have  brought  together  the  ends  of  the 
earth.  The  merchant  and  the  soldier  wove  the  fabric  of  Ro- 
man civilization.  The  Crusades  redeemed  Europe  by  giving 
it  light  from  the  East.  For  Europe  and  America,  Business  and 
War  have  rediscovered  India,  China,  and  Japan.  Let  us  hope 
that  only  in  appearance  do  they  squander  human  lives  for 
naught. 

"  O  yet  we  trust  that  somehow  good 
Will  be  the  final  goal  of  ill."  1 

1  Tennyson,  In  Memoriam. 


CHAPTER   III 

CIVILIZATION    AND    EDUCATION 

In  our  country  and  in  our  times,  no  man  is  worthy  the  honored  name  of  statesman  who 
does  not  include  the  highest  practicable  education  of  the  people  in  all  his  plans  of  admin- 
istration. —  MANN,  Education  (lecture  iii). 

Therefore,  my  people  are  taken  into  captivity  for  want  of  knowledge.  — Isaiah  v,  13. 

The  perfection  of  human  life  is  our  aim.  —  POLLOCK,  History  of  the  Science of Politics, 
p.  124. 

To  educate  is  to  educe  or  to  develop ;  to  instruct  is  to 
train ;  to  inculcate  is  to  inform ;  while  to  teach  is  to 
show,  to  guide,  to  impart  anything  whatever  for  any 
purpose  whatsoever.1  These  terms  are  arranged  in  an 
order  that,  according  to  the  strictest  logic,  displays  the 
extent  and  intent  of  their  content.  Educate  denotes  most, 
teach  least ;  educate  connotes  least,  teach  most.  Educate 
has  the  most  intension,  teach  the  most  extension.  There- 
fore, educate  is  a  word  more  difficult  of  definition  than 
teach.  And,  therefore,  despite  popular  notions  and  prac- 
tices, while  even  a  child  may  teach,  only  an  expert  can 
educate. 

It  has  frequently  been  observed  that  without  teaching 
humanity  in  the  course  of  a  single  generation  would  re- 
lapse into  savagery  and  nearly  perish  in  internecine  war- 
fare. Civilization  is  utterly  dependent  upon  teaching.2 
But  is  it  true  that  without  education  humanity  would  be 
wrecked  ?  Despite  the  obviousness  of  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  two  hypotheses,  many,  failing  to  discriminate 

1  Cf.  Palmer,  "  The  Ideal  Teacher,"  Atlantic  Monthly,  April,  1907, 
p.  442. 

*  Per  contra,  Ross,  Social  Control,  pp.  152,  224.  He  insists  that  the 
"  moral  osmosis  "  and  the  "  vegetative  moral  life  "  assist  teaching  to 
maintain  civilization. 


CIVILIZATION   AND   EDUCATION  53 

between  teaching  and  education  and  between  civilization 
and  humanity,  have  confused  them.  Let  us,  therefore, 
inquire  as  to  the  relation  between  education  and  civilized 
humanity.  First,  then,  what  is  civilization  ?  and,  next, 
what  is  humanity  ? 

Like  many  other  grandiose  terms, — like  culture,  phi- 
losophy, religion,  philanthropy,  nation,  wealth,  —  the 
term  civilization  lends  itself  more  readily  to  description 
than  to  definition.  In  popular  usage  it  has  several  mean- 
ings, none  of  them  clear ;  and  it  may  be  used  properly 
to  designate  either  process  or  result,  either  kinesis  or 
status. 

Civilization  is  the  evolution  of  human  society.  Its  me- 
chanical processes  may  be  stated  in  these  terms,  —  Humanity 
is  originally  manifested  in  groups,  from  whose  conflicts  and 
unions  larger  societies  are  formed.  In  these  societies,  the 
weaker  and  more  numerous  individuals  are  reduced  to  the  ser- 
vice of  the  stronger  and  fewer,  who,  thus  granted  economic 
leisure,  develop  the  political  structure  and  the  various  arts  of 
war  and  of  peace.  By  the  new  social  relations,  the  hetero- 
geneous ethnic  elements  are  brought  into  closer  homogeneity 
of  kinship  and  of  sympathy  and  develop  a  typical  and  integral 
character.  Other  conflicts  and  unions  with  other  groups  and 
societies  arise.  The  general  society  grows  externally  larger 
and  internally  more  complex  and  displays  in  succession  aris- 
tocracy, oligarchy,  bureaucracy,  monarchy,  democracy ;  and 
bourgeoisie,  proletarians,  peasants,  slaves,  various  manners  of 
classes,  of  castes  and  of  masses.  When  too  great  homogeneity 
of  blood-kinship  and  independence  from  other  societies  have 
continued  for  decades,  conspiring  to  separate  too  far  the 
nobles  and  the  commons,  the  rich  and  the  poor,  the  free  and 
the  unfree,  the  society  disintegrates  in  revolution.  The  his- 
tory of  a  particular  civilization  ends  always  either  in  its  sub- 
jection to  another  civilization  or  in  cataclysm.1 

The  spirit  of  true  civilization  has  been  expressed  in 
these  terms:  — 

1  Gumplowicz,  Outlines  of  Sociology,  part  iii,  translated  by  Moore. 


54  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

"Civilization  is  ...  a  complicated  outcome  of  a  war 
waged  with  Nature  by  man  in  Society  to  prevent  her  from 
putting  into  execution  in  his  case  her  law  of  Natural  Selec- 
tion. .  .  .  The  measure  of  success  attending  the  struggle  of 
each  band  or  association  [of  men]  so  engaged  is  the  measure 
of  the  civilization  attained."  l 

Civilization  is  progress,  said  Guizot.  The  contrary  of  the 
qualities  and  conditions  of  the  savage  life  is  civilization,  said 
J.  S.  Mill." 

Our  notions  of  civilization  necessarily  depend  upon  the 
observed  facts  of  our  own  national  life  and  of  the  lives 
of  other  nations,  our  cross-sections  of  humanity,  as  now 
manifested  in  various  parts  of  the  world,  compared  and 
contrasted  with  the  recorded  and  considered  facts  of  the 
lives  of  earlier  nations.3  But  whatever  these  notions  may 
be,  they  will  concern  truth,  art,  and  morality ;  our  visions 
of  reality,  of  beauty,  and  of  goodness  ;  our  development 
in  intelligence,  in  appreciation,  and  in  honor.  And  what- 
ever these  notions  be,  they  will  all  be  essentially  social ; 
for  they  will  be  derived  from  our  fellow  men  and  in  com- 
mon with  our  fellow  men  from  the  records  and  traditions 
of  our  ancestors.  Now  and  then  may  appear  among  us 
one  who  to  a  degree  is  original  in  that  he  possesses  some 
new  individual  knowledge ;  but  most  of  this  original,  new 
knowledge  will  be  new  and  original  in  appearance  only, 
for  upon  examination  it  will  be  mere  synthesis  of  what 
many  others  know. 

The  quality  of  a  civilization  is  to  be  valued  in  accord- 
ance with  its  morality,  while  its  culture  is  the  measure  of 

1  Mitchell,  The  Past  in  the  Present :   What  is  Civilization?  p.  189. 

2  Cf.  Kidd,  Law  of  Civilization  and  Decay  ;  Draper,  Intellectual  Devel- 
opment of  Europe.    If  civilization  is  not  cyclical  and  does   not   include 
retrogression  as  well  as  progression,  the  title  and  thesis  of  Gibbon,  "  De- 
cline and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,"  must  be  considered  either  illogical 
or  unhistorical. 

*  Acton,  Study  of  History,  pp.  12-16;  Seeley,  Lectures  and  Essays, 
p.  306. 


CIVILIZATION   AND   EDUCATION  55 

its  efficiency.  Hence  arise  the  two  questions  whether 
there  is  a  morality  transcending  nations  or  ages  l  and 
whether  diffusion  of  culture  or  its  particular  height  is  the 
true  test.  These  large  philosophical  questions  concern 
the  educator :  Shall  he  teach  social,  popular,  historical, 
national,  comparative,  or  ideal  morals  ?  Shall  he  aspire 
to  educate  as  many  as  possible  to  the  average  best  pos- 
sible degree,  or  a  few  to  their  particular  best  possible 
degrees  ?  According  to  his  answers  to  these  questions, 
he  will  mould  the  life  of  his  people.2 

Social  (group)  morals  differ  with  the  particular  class  in  the 
community.  The  lord  believes  in  honor,  in  self-reliance,  in 
bravery,  in  t frankness,  in  patriotism,  in  independence  :  he  is 
masterful.8  The  commoner  believes  in  honesty,  in  service,  in 
fortitude,  in  silence,  in  sympathy,  in  modesty ;  he  is  dutiful.4 
The  educator  who  proposes  to  teach  social  morality  will  teach 
the  morality  learned  in  his  own  youth,  —  a  morality  predeter- 
mined by  the  social  (economic)  position  of  his  parents,  in 
the  degree  permitted  by  the  social  conditions  of  the  parents 
of  his  pupils. 

Popular  morals  are  broader  and  deeper  than  social  (group) 
morals.  They  differ  less  from  section  to  section  and  from 
generation  to  generation  than  do  social  morals  in  their  smaller 
and  shallower  diffusion.  They  manifest  the  influences  that 
go  to  the  making  of  all  averages.  To  particularize  :  Popular 
morals  depend  upon  kinds  and  forces  of  the  various  classes, 
cultures,  communities,  races,  religions,  and  languages  in- 
volved. The  educator  who  proposes  to  teach  popular  morality 
will  teach  the  norm  of  the  morality  of  the  various  persons 
and  communities  known  or  reported  to  him. 

Historical  morals  go  far  deeper.  They  speak  the  truth  of 
the  progress  of  mankind.  They  sound  the  natural  law. 

1  Acton,  Study  of  History,  pp.  64-73. 

2  Hadley,  Education  of  the  American  Citizen,  p.  180. 

3  Cf.  Aristotle,  Ethics,  iv,  78,  on  the  high-minded  man. 

4  This   contrast   is   now  a  commonplace.    Nietzsche,    Genealogy    of 
Morals  ;  Ruskin,  Munera  Pulveris,  Fors  Clavigera  ;  Lecky,  History  of 
European  Morals  ;  all  passim. 


56  EDUCATION   AND    SOCIETY 

National  morals  are  stable  for  long  periods,  though  subject 
to  revolutionary  change.  Their  aspirations  are  sincere. 

Morals  are  in  part  traditional,  and  in  part  comparative. 
In  their  traditional  aspect,  they  are  habits,  duties,  customs ;  in 
their  comparative  aspect,  fashions,  modes.1 

Comparative  morals  are  as  deep  as  history  and  as  wide 
as  the  nations  :  they,  and  they  alone,  are  absolutely  true 
to  our  universal  human  nature,  for  in  the  present  they 
include  the  best  of  the  past.  Jesus  Christ  summarized 
them  :  "Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy 
heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy  mind,  and 
with  all  thy  strength;  and  .  .  .  thy  neighbor  as  thy- 
self." 2 

.  .  .  'AfATTHCEIC  (welcome  as  a  household  guest)  KY- 
PION  TON  0E6N  COY  'E|  "OAH8^KAPA(AC  COY  (out of 
thy  whole  heart)  KAJ  'E|  "OAHC  THC  VYXHC  COY  (out  of 
thy  whole  soul)  KAJ  'E|  "OAHC  THC  AIAN6IA8  COY  (out 
of  thy  whole  thorough-mind,  discernment,  intention)  KAJ  'Ej| 
"OAHC  TH8  ICXYOC  COY  (and  out  of  thy  whole  bodily 
strength).  .  .  .  'AFATTHCEIC  (welcome,  love,  dwell  with) 
T6N  TTAHCJON  COY  (thy  near  man)  CCOC  CEAYT6N  (thy 
very  self).  The  power  and  beauty  of  the  Greek  text  do  not  fully 
appear  in  the  English  translation.  "  Love  "  means  the  love 
expressed  by  a  noble  host  toward  an  honored  guest  whom  he 
welcomes  into  his  own  home.  (Compare  dya#os.)  The  tremen- 
dous emphasis  appears  in  the  exposition,  —  heart,  soul,  mind, 
strength,  —  and  particularly  in  the  word  "  mind,"  which  means 
perfect  insight  and  unlimited  purpose.  (For  neighbor,  com- 
pare the  definition  of  the  neighbor  in  the  parable  of  the  Good 
Samaritan.8)  The  word  tvToXrj,  command,  is  likewise  emphatic, 
meaning  "  finality."  For  the  whole  passage,  compare  "  Jesus 
.  .  .  said  .  .  .  ,  '  If  a  man  love  me,  he  will  keep  my  words : 

1  Ross,  Social  Control,  pp.  180-195.  Cf.  Baldwin,  Mental  Development : 
Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations,  chapter  I,  viii-x. 

2  Mark,  Gospel  xii,  30,  31.  Greek  text  of  Westcott  and  Hort :  Schaff, 
editor. 

3  Luke,  Gospel  x,  29-37. 


CIVILIZATION    AND   EDUCATION  57 

and  my  Father  will  love  him,  and  we  will  come  unto  him 
and  make  our  abode  with  him.'"1  Literally:  If  any  one 
welcomes  (and  honors)  me,  he  will  guard  my  plan  (logic),  and 
my  father  will  welcome  him,  and  we  will  (freely)  go* to  him, 
and  we  will  make  a  home  (staying)  with  him.  This  plan  of 
Jesus  was  invariably  to  do  for  others.  Toward  all,  we  are  to 
be  like  God,  who  "  giveth  to  all  men  liberally  and  upbraideth 
not." 2  "  It  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive." 8  From 
this  single  principle,  every  other  doctrine  of  Jesus  follows. 
It  is  the  neighbor-religion,  ridiculed  by  Schopenhauer,  Von 
Hartmann,  and  Nietzsche;  and  rejected  by  every  civilization 
to  this  date :  and  yet  building  every  civilization ;  and  destroy- 
ing it  finally.4 

"  Have  ye  founded  your  thrones  and  altars,  then, 
On  the  bodies  and  souls  of  living  men  ? 
And  think  ye  that  building  shall  endure, 
Which  shelters  the  noble  and  crushes  the  poor  ?  "  6 

Ideal  morality  may  seem  the  proper  teaching  for  the 
educator.  Kant  often  spoke  with  enthusiasm  of  "  the  moral 
law  within."  "  The  still,  small  voice  of  conscience  "  is  a  famil- 
iar phrase :  nor  is  conscience  to  be  lightly  challenged  as  a 
reality  of  personal  experience.  But  whether  conscience  is  a 
revelation  of  new  truth,  original  with  the  soul  that  hears  it, 
or  an  echo,  a  sifting,  a  refining  of  the  notions  of  general 
human  society  is  a  question.  New  truth  does  come  into  the 

1  John,  Gospel  xiv,  23. 

2  James,  Epistle  i,  5. 

3  Luke,  Acts  xx,  35.    A  saying  of  Jesus',  quoted  by  Paul. 

4  "  The  suffering  of  an  advanced  society  is  not  that  of  one  straggling 
for  subsistence,  or  in  combat  with  enemies,  but  of  one  in  the  throes 
of  disease."   ..."  The  civilization  natural  to  our  age  is  conspicuously 
retarded  by  ignorance,  disease,  crime,  poverty,  and  other  disagreeable 
anachronisms."   Charlotte  Oilman,  Human  Work,  pp.  10,  7. 

The  familiar  "  Golden  Rule  "  is  not  half  of  the  above-quoted  "  Eleventh 
and  Twelfth  Commandments."  It  is  a  prescription  that  one  about  to  act 
should  consider  the  sufferer.  Its  converse,  Do  not  do  unto  others  what  you 
would  not  have  them  do  to  you,  is  negative  and  inhibitory  for  the  actor. 

The  "  New  Commandments  "  universalize  the  Golden  Rule  and  thereby 
immeasurably  elevate  and  dignify  its  principle. 

s  Lowell,  A  Parable. 


58  EDUCATION   AND    SOCIETY 

world  via  individual  men.  In  the  souls  of  such  exceptional 
men,  conscience,  morality,  duty,  responsibility,  rise  to  new 
heights,  but  even  in  them  common  morality  is  the  substruc- 
ture ami  the  main  structure,  the  new  truth  only  the  super- 
structure, of  their  moral  system.1  Moreover,  once  expressed 
by  them  in  act  or  in  thought,  their  higher  morality  is  no 
longer  ideal  but  real,  and  is  added  to  the  sum  of  comparative 
morals.  "  E  pur  si  muove,"  said  Galileo ;  and  lived  and  died 
to  prove  what  he  said.  Even  morality  advances.2  We  know 
the  road  but  cannot  see  the  goal.8 

The  term  morals  forthshadows  its  true  meaning. 
Morals  are  customs ;  but  customs  are  not  necessarily 
morals.4  Morals  are  almost  synonymous  with  ethics. 

The  shades  of  difference  appear  in  the  roots  of  the  two 
words  morals  (mos,  custom,  manner,  mode,  cf.  maneo,  remain) 
and  ethics  («f0o«,  custom,  will,  cf.  c0e\w,  desire ;  0eds,  god  [free 
in  act] ;  and  £0vo<s,  race,  peoples,  caste).  Morals  are  the  ex- 
ternal habits  and  manners ;  the  modes  of  action  ;  the  objec- 
tive customs ;  the  clothes  of  the  individual  and  of  society.6 
Ethics  are  the  habits  of  thought,  of  will,  and  of  desire ;  the 
subjective  customs ;  the  forms  and  modes  that  express  the 
character ;  the  language,  the  force,  the  grace  of  the  individual 
and  of  society.  A  moral  quality  may  always  be  measured ;  an 
ethical  may  only  be  inferred ;  one  lies  upon  the  surface,  the 
other  below  it 

"  In  the  beginning  is  the  act."  * 

The  act  evidences  the  motive  and  discloses  more  or  less  of 
the  ethical  character  of  the  actor.  The  judgment  of  the  act 

1  "  To  know  that  the  greatest  men  of  earth  are  men  who  think  as  I  do, 
but  deeper,  and  see  the  real  as  I  do,  but  clearer,  who  work  to  the  goal 
that  I  do,  but  faster,  and  serve  humanity  as  I  do,  but  better,  —  that  is  an 
inspiration  to  my  life."   Baldwin,  Mental  Development,  vol.  ii,  chapter, 
"  The  Genius,"  p.  168. 

2  Westermarck,  Origin  and  Development  of  Moral  Ideas. 

3  Hoffding,  Problems  of  Philosophy,  p.  1 86. 

4  Socrates  died  to  prove  this.    Crito  ;  Phcedo. 
»  Cf.  Carlyle,  Sartor  Resartus. 

•  Goethe,  Faust,  part  i,  sc.  iii.  Such  is  the  first  axiom  of  the  modem 
pragmatic  philosophy. 


CIVILIZATION   AND    EDUCATION  59 

is  an  ethical  judgment ;  but  the  language  in  which  that  judg- 
ment is  expressed  conveys  a  moral  decision.  An  act  may  be 
in  accordance  with  the  morals  of  the  times  and  yet  be  essen- 
tially immoral ;  or  it  may  offend  the  common  morals  and  yet 
be  essentially  moral.  But  no  ethically  correct  action,  no  right- 
eousness, ever  offends  customary  or  historical  or  national  or 
comparative  ethics ;  because  by  definition  ethics  is  in  con- 
formity with  reason,  and,  by  definition  again,  reason  is  uni- 
versal, uniform,  and  increasingly  certain.  Ethics,  then,  is  a 
single  term  conveying  the  meaning  of  the  phrase,  "ideal 
morality." l 

In  appearance,  there  is  here  a  paradox ;  or  rather,  here  is 
a  paradox  in  the  original  meaning  of  the  term,  a  proposition 
that  appears  false  until  it  has  been  adequately  considered. 
Humanity  requires  a  term  to  satisfy  its  need  of  finality,  the 
Kantian  category  of  absolute  obligation.  Ethics  is  such  a 
term,  a  metaphysical  abstraction  that  enspheres,  illuminates, 
and  organizes  the  kinds  and  modes  of  duty.2 

The  entire  structure  of  a  particular  civilization  de- 
pends upon  its  morality.  This  is  its  character.  So  the 

1  "  Duty  is  to  our  humanity  what  gravitation  is  to  the  physical  uni- 
verse. "    Martineau,  Ethics  and  Religion,  p.  302. 

"  The  situation  that  has  not  Ideal,  its  Duty,  was  never  yet  occupied 
by  man."  Carlyle,  Sartor  Resartus,  book  ii,  chapter  ix. 

"  Thou  dost  preserve  the  stars  from  wrong, 
And  the  most  ancient  heavens,  through  Thee,  are  fresh  and  strong." 

Wordsworth,  Ode  to  Duty. 

2  Watson,  Philosophy  of  Kant  {extracts}.    "  Nothing  in  all  the  world, 
or  even  outside  the  world,  can  possibly  be  regarded  as  limitlessly  good 
except  a  good  -will"  (p,  225).    This  goodwill  enforces  "the  obligation  to 
act  from  pure  reverence  of  the  moral  law,"  irrespective  of  consequences. 
"  Reason  issues  its  commands  inflexibly,  refusing  to  promise  anything 
to  the  natural  desires"  (p.  231)  and  despising  their  claims.     "  There  is 
but  one  categorical  imperative  :  Act  according  to  that  maxim,  and  that 
only,  which  you  can  will  at  that  time  to  be  a  universal  law"  (p.  241). 
Or,  "  act  as  if  the  maxim  from  which  you  act  were  to  become  through 
your  will  a  universal  law  of  Nature."    Such  is  rationalized  morality. 
"  Act  so  that  the  will  may  regard  itself  as  in  its  maxims  laying  down 
universal  laws "  (p.  249).    Such  a   categorical  imperative   necessitates 
each  man's  conceiving  himself  as  an  end  in  himself,  which  upon    re- 
flection means  conceiving  himself  as  free  and  a  lawgiver  to  himself. 


60  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

entire  structure  of  a  particular  person  depends  upon  his 
morality,  which  is  his  character.  And  since  it  is  the 
purpose  of  education  to  develop  character,  obviously  this 
can  be  accomplished  only  by  training  in  the  morality  of 
civilization  as  manifested  in  the  morality  of  the  best 
persons.1 

Here  we  come  upon  the  essential  problem  of  educa- 
tion. And  we  must  solve  it  in  the  light  of  certain  axioms, 
self-evident  or  agreed  truths.  Unless  there  are  such 
truths,  there  cannot  possibly  be  any  science  of  educa- 
tion or  any  need  for  an  art  of  education ;  for  otherwise 
education  must  appear  to  be  a  matter  of  a  series  of  for- 
tunate accidents,  within  and  without  the  individual,  an 
occasional,  sporadic,  unintended,  unnecessary,  unintel- 
ligible procession  of  facts,  which  no  amount  of  desire, 
will,  and  intelligence  can  secure  with  certainty.  The 
common  sense  of  mankind  says,  Not  so.  But  has  our 
common  sense  erred  ? 

Many  persons  deny  that  education  is  ever  consciously 
accomplished  or  achieved.  According  to  their  notion,  which 
they  often  express  both  in  speech  and  in  action,  educated  in- 
telligence exists  only  where  the  intelligence  would  have  been 
equally  great  without  education.  All  increase  in  ability  ac- 
companying or  following  courses  of  education  is  but  the  in- 
crease natural  to  the  person.  At  most,  educational  courses 
but  sift  the  smart  and  label  them  to  their  social  advantage ; 
yet  the  courses  are  in  no  wise  to  be  credited  with  the  result. 

This  is  our  crux  difficultatis.  Is  there  a  law  of 
growth  ? 

Our  problem  is,  Can  reason  effect  education  ?  If  it 
can,  then  let  us  seriously  undertake  the  task  of  universal 
education ;  if  it  cannot,  let  us  give  up  our  futile  general 
experiments,  allowing  individuals,  when  they  so  desire, 
to  waste  their  time,  their  wealth,  and  their  energy  for 

1  "  Men  of  character  are  the  conscience  of  the  society  to  which  they 
belong."  Emerson,  Character. 


CIVILIZATION   AND   EDUCATION  61 

affection's  sake  upon  their  own,  but  no  longer  squander- 
ing the  common  treasure. 

This  is  no  idle  matter.  All  about  us,  for  hundreds  of  gen- 
erations, the  long-schooled  —  the  university-cultivated  men  — 
have  in  most  instances  not  manifested  the  character  of  the 
educated.  "  So  with  the  man  who  has  daily  inured  himself  to 
habits  of  concentrated  attention,  energetic  volition,  and  self- 
denial  in  unnecessary  things.  He  will  stand  like  a  tower 
when  everything  rocks  around  him,  and  his  softer  fellow  mor- 
tals are  winnowed  like  chaff  in  the  blast." l  Certain  minori- 
ties —  one,  two,  three,  five,  to  be  very  generous,  perhaps  ten  in 
a  hundred  —  of  the  schooled  and  graduated  men  and  women 
have  been  well  educated ;  but  most  have  developed  in  moral 
character,  the  final  test,  no  more  than  they  would  have  de- 
veloped in  the  haphazard  environment  of  life  out  of  school 
and  college. 

How  many  years  ago  the  animal  destined  for  human- 
ity developed  its  last  physical  feature,  the  hand,2  no  one 
knows.  Until  the  human  hand  was  completely  developed, 
the  brain  was  not  finished.3  Until  then  the  education  of 
man  beyond  the  animal  was  proceeding  physiologically 
as  well  as  psychologically.  But  when  the  hand,  with  its 
four  fingers  and  its  opposing  thumb,  with  its  muscular 
palm  and  sensitive  finger-tips,  had  been  finished,  the  ani- 
mal in  man  had  been  perfectly  wrought  out.  Whatever 
cells  and  tissues,  whatever  blood  and  lymph  currents, 
whatever  organs  and  systems  of  organs,  whatever  gen- 
eral and  special  senses  could  accomplish  in  building  and 
furnishing  a  temple  for  a  soul,  had  been  accomplished. 

The  origin  of  man  is,  as  every  one  knows,  lost  in  obscurity. 
Several  facts  of  much  anthropological  interest  are  hidden  from 
the  knowledge  of  man,  —  the  future;  the  cause  of  sex;  the 

1  James,  Talks  on  Psychology  and  Life's  Ideals,  p.  76. 

2  Drummond,  Ascent  of  Man,  pp.  100  et  seq. 

3  MacDougall,  "  Significance  of  the  Human  Hand  in  the  Evolution 
of  Mind,"  Journal  of  Psychology,  April,  1905. 


62  EDUCATION    AND   SOCIETY 

origin  of  life  ;  the  links  connecting  man  and  his  progenitors, 
the  anthropoids  and  subanthropoids  ;  the  stages  by  which  the 
sea-animal  became  a  land  animal  quadruped,  then  a  tree  ani- 
mal (when  the  hand  evolved),  and  last  a  land  animal  biped  -,1 
and  the  region  of  the  origin  of  man,  wherein  God  breathed 
into  him  the  breath  of  life,  and  he  became  a  living  soul.2 

Whether  in  forty  or  fifty  or  a  hundred  thousand 
years,  man  has  grown  taller,  heavier,  and  stronger, 
or  the  contrary,  does  not  affect  the  question  of  his  edu- 
cability,  for  between  height,  weight,  and  strength, 
whether  of  animals  or  of  men,  no  relation  of  intelligence 
and  character  has  ever  been  established.3  Elephants, 
horses,  and  dogs  are  rival  claimants  for  intellectual 
supremacy  among  the  beasts,  and  parrots,  crows,  and 
canaries  among  the  fowls.  Kant  was  five  feet  in  height, 
Napoleon  five  feet  four  inches,  Emerson  five  feet  eight, 
Gladstone  five  feet  ten,  Webster  the  same,  Bismarck  six 
feet  one  inch,  Washington  six  feet  three,  and  Lincoln 
six  feet  four  inches.  Little  and  big,  sick  and  well,  weak 
and  strong,  indifferently  are  good  and  bad,  capable  and 
dull.  Even  the  nervous  speed,  the  psychological  rate, 
makes  but  slight  difference.  The  quick  and  the  slow 
indifferently  are  educable  or  not  educable.  Sex  matters 
little  or  nothing.4  Race  is  of  but  slight  importance. 
Between  Alexander  and  Napoleon,  Dewey  and  Togo, 
Confucius  and  Buddha,  Dante  and  Goethe,  Tolstoi  and 
Hawthorne,  Socrates  and  Emerson,  Aristotle  and  Kant, 
Grant  and  Oyama,  Sophocles  and  Shakespeare,  there 
is  not  much  to  choose.  The  ages  have  displayed  no 
determinable  advance.  Sargon,  Caesar,  Charlemagne, 
have  no  modern  superiors.  David,  the  author  of  Job, 

1  Tyler,    Whence  and  Whither  of  Man ;  Darwin,   Descent  of  Man  ; 
Drummond,  Ascent  of  Man  ;   Hall,  Heirs  of  the  Ages  ;  Hall,  Adolescence: 
its  Psychology  ;  Kidd,  Social  Evolution :  all  passim. 

2  Genesis  ii,  7. 

3  Donaldson,  Growth  of  the  B rain,  p.  174. 

4  Thompson,  The  Mental  Traits  of  Sex,  chapter  U. 


CIVILIZATION   AND   EDUCATION  63 

Homer,  yEschylus,  Thucydides,  Virgil,  Paul,  Plato, 
Ovid,  Cicero,  Tacitus,  Plutarch,  St.  Augustine,  Luther, 
Tennyson,  Lowell,  Thackeray,  Marian  Evans,  Victor 
Hugo,  display  no  gradual  improvement  in  the  mind  of 
man.  If  the  good  inherit  personal  immortality  in  a  local- 
ized heaven,  the  ancients  will  doubtless  be  found  the 
peers  of  the  moderns,1  whether  the  race  lasts  a  hundred 
thousand  or  a  hundred  million  years. 

Whatever  be  the  metaphysics  of  the  individual,  this 
opinion  of  physiology  that  man  as  a  physical  animal 
is  no  longer  improving  is  likely  to  be  acceptable.  From 
Abraham  till  now,  we  are  all  fellow  men.  The  soul  of  the 
modern  harmonizes  with  the  soul  of  the  ancient :  all  of 
us  have  sought  and  are  now  seeking  the  same  goal. 
Life  is  a  school,  the  same  kind  of  a  school  since  the 
walls  of  Thebes  first  rose.  Human  educability  is  the 
same  now  as  in  the  days  of  Tiglath-pileser. 

Is  there  any  difference  between  men  and  nations 
of  the  different  ages  ?  Undoubtedly  there  is ;  and,  of 
course,  this  difference  is  in  knowledge.  With  not  one 
new  cerebral  cell  or  spinal  ganglion,  man  the  individual 
is  the  same  educable  creature  as  in  the  days  of  Moses ; 
but  man  the  race  knows  more.2  How  much  more  that 
it  is  really  worth  while  to  know,  how  much  more  truth, 
let  no  man  undertake  to  say.  The  stones  that  bore  the 
commands  given  in  the  thunder  of  Sinai  recorded  truth 
to  which  the  race  has  not  yet  risen.  No  civilization 
as  yet  has  fairly  represented  the  results  of  faithful 
observance  of  the  Ten  Commandments.  No  civilization 
yet  has  attempted  to  express  the  meaning  of  the  Tenth. 
We  do,  indeed,  know  more  than  any  other  people  ever 
knew ;  and  yet  it  may  be  that  the  race  has  forgotten 
many  things.  There  are  reasons  to  believe  that  a  vast 
deal  of  knowledge  perished  with  the  Egyptians,  with  the 

1  Duruy  (Grosvener,  transl.),  Ancient  History  of  the  East,  p.  25. 

2  Charlotte  Oilman,  Human  Work,  chapter  iii. 


64 

Chaldeans,  with  the  Greeks,  with  the  Romans,  with  the 
Arabs,  with  the  Venetians,  with  the  Moors.  And  yet  no 
serious  man  would  challenge  the  proposition  that  Ger- 
many, France,  England,  America,  or  Japan,  knows  more 
than  any  earlier  nation,  not  excepting  Greece  "in  her 
glory's  prime."  Not  only  do  we  know  more,  but  much  of 
our  knowledge  is  now  set  in  order,  in  systems,  in  sciences. 
This  orderly  knowledge  is  the  key  to  education.  It  is, 
in  truth,  a  partial  discovery  of  the  logos  (Aoyos)  without 
which  was  not  anything  made  that  was  made.1 

"  The  belief  that  the  course  of  events  and  the  agency  of 
man  are  subject  to  the  laws  of  a  divine  order,  which  it  is  alike 
impossible  for  any  one  either  fully  to  comprehend  or  effectu- 
ally to  resist  —  this  belief  is  the  ground  of  all  our  hope  for  the 
future  destinies  of  mankind."  2 

In  a  certain  sense,  it  is  the  race  rather  than  the  indi- 
vidual that  has  been  educated,  for  the  individual  of  these 
later  times  inherits  the  results  of  the  experiences  of  the 
individuals  of  the  past.  The  total  of  these  experiences 
is  the  racial  culture,  expressed  partly  in  laws,  customs, 
institutions,  habits,  and  notions,  and  partly  in  ideals  and 
standards  not  reducible  to  words  or  forms  or  habits, 
which  we  may  call  the  human  spirit  or  wisdom.  That 


1  irdina  5i'    avrov  iytwro,  Kal  XVP^5  &VTOV  iytvero  ov$^  Iv.    Literally, 
all  things  came  to  be  through  (via)  this  (\6yos,  thought),  and  without  this 
no  [existing  ]  thing  came  to  be.   fc  yiyovtv  tv  avr<?  £«$>  [T^V]  ,  xol  ^  £«))  fa  rb 
<t>ws  T&V  avOpt/airwi'.    What  began  in  this  was  life,  and  the  life  was  the  light 
of  (the)  men.    John,  Gospel  i,  3,  4. 

This  passage  is  truly  Platonic.  It  glorifies  the  Idea  (IS«'a),  of  which  the 
human  mind  (vovs)  is  but  a  form.  Plato,  Phcedo,  96;  Timaus,  51; 
Pkilebus,  54  ;  Sophist,  256;  Tkeatetus,  184,  186,  and  many  other  passages. 

The  teaching  is  that  the  Reason  (God)  created  the  cosmos,  and  that 
His  light  forever  shines  in  every  individual  man  in  the  cosmos.  These 
"own"  of  the  Reason,  His  "idiots,"  do  not  understand  Him.  But 
such  as  do  understand  Him  (in  so  far  as  they  understand)  become  His 
offspring  not  from  the  flesh  or  their  own  desire  but  from  God  (lit  Oeov, 
from  the  Vision,  8e6s,  of  the  Light,  <f>ws,  sent  by  the  Reason,  Arf-yoi). 

2  Thirlwall,  Remains,  iii,  282. 


CIVILIZATION   AND   EDUCATION  65 

the  race  has  been  educated,  and  that  individuals  partake, 
some  largely,  some  but  little,  some  scarcely  at  all,  in 
this  racial  education  is  the  common  belief:  if  it  be  but 
illusion,  then  humanity  is  insane,  too  insane  to  recognize 
in  any  degree  its  essential  madness. 

The  relations  of  the  individual  to  the  racial  culture 
are  two  ;  discrete,  independent,  necessary.  One  relation 
is  that  of  the  bondman,  the  other  that  of  the  heir.  Birth 
brings  with  it  conditions  of  environment,  conditions  filial, 
ecclesiastical,  political,  physical,  economic,  from  which 
escape  is  absolutely,  at  least  for  all  practical  purposes, 
impossible.  In  this  relation,  one's  education  is  more 
than  compulsory,  it  is  inevitable.  So  inevitable  is  it  that 
we  speak  generally  of  it  as  "rearing"  or  "breeding" 
or  "parentage."  We  often  forget  that  for  a  child  of 
good  parents  to  become  good  is  a  matter  not  of  nature 
but  of  education ;  so  also  with  regard  to  the  aristocrat, 
the  healthy,  the  rich.  The  truth  of  this  we  recognize  at 
once  by  postulating  the  opposite  :  imagine  a  child  born 
of  poor,  sickly,  outlawed,  sinful,  unkind  parents,  who  cast 
him  out  as  a  foundling,  and  adopted  by  sensible  foster- 
parents,  entirely  opposite  in  character  and  station.  By 
common  consent,  these  new  parents  have  before  them  a 
work  of  education.  The  child  has  escaped  from  one  bond- 
age to  another.  He  has  changed  one  fate  for  another. 
Even  the  Gospel,  which  fulfills  the  Law,  is  a  schooling.1 

The  other  relation  is  that  of  heir.  This  is  obviously, 
apparently,  openly,  a  relation  of  education.  The  heir 
inherits  all,  but,  of  course,  can  really  possess  only  that 
which  he  understands,  appreciates,  and  uses.  In  these 
times,  one's  property  may  far  exceed  his  possessions ; 
this  is  no  less  true  of  culture  than  of  wealth.  The  bond- 
age of  the  environment  compels  adjustment  to  facts ; 

1  "  The  law  was  our  schoolmaster  to  bring  us  unto  Christ."  Paul, 
Galatians  iii,  24.  Literally,  the  law  (the  culture  from  the  past)  became 
our  pedagogue  unto  Christ.  Also  Matthew,  Gospel  v,  17,  18. 


66  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

this  is  the  natural  or  necessary  or  inevitable  education  ; 
but  the  heritage  merely  offers  opportunities,  and  what- 
ever education  may  result  is  voluntary.  As  certainly  as 
the  heir  of  the  millionaire  may  renounce  his  inheritance 
of  wealth  or  waste  it,  so  certainly  may  the  heir  of  the 
scholar  refuse  or  ignore  his  inheritance  of  knowledge. 
And  we  are  all  heirs :  of  wealth,  in  public  buildings, 
parks,  roads  ;  of  knowledge,  in  books,  arts,  minds.1 

Every  inheritance  is  conditioned  by  the  ability  to 
enter  in.  The  lazy,  stupid  heir  to  a  fortune  is  no  less 
and  no  more  subject  to  this  condition  than  is  the  lazy, 
stupid  heir  to  knowledge  and  to  art. 

It  has  sometimes  been  said  that  while  one  may  or  may  not 
be  an  heir  to  wealth,  every  one  is  an  heir  to  the  culture  of 
the  ages.  This  is  a  careless  but  dangerous  fallacy.  The  boy 
of  quick  and  retentive  mind  is  a  possible  heir  to  the  world's 
knowledge  ;  but  he  cannot  qualify  unless  given  health,  time, 
and  opportunity.  He  must  have  either  parents  or  guardians 
able  and  willing  to  support  him  in  study,  and  also  school, 
library,  and  laboratory  in  which  to  study.  Moreover,  he  must 
have  surplus  energy  for  study. 

There  is  a  feature  of  the  physical  and  the  psychical  inher- 
itance to  which  education  must  give  greater  consideration. 
There  is  a  catharsis  due  to  satiety  of  experience  in  parents 
that  forefends  children  from  repeating  their  lives  or  powers. 
In  the  child  of  the  skillful  manual  laborer,  motivation  func- 
tions not  in  bodily  technique,  but  in  spiritual  activity.  The 
ancestors  live  in  their  descendant  a  new  mode  of  existence. 
The  energy  of  the  soul  functions  differently.  Here  demo- 
cracy, denying  class  and  caste,  denying  "  like  father  like  son," 
asserting  the  value  of  "  fallow  ground  "  and  the  necessity  of 
opportunity,  is  true  at  once  to  the  biologic  law  of  variability 
and  the  physiological  law  of  cross-functioning  in  heredity.2 
Parents  acquire  qualities  for  their  children  to  use.  It  is  a 
psychological  exposition  of  the  Second  Commandment. 

1  Butler,  Meaning  of  Education,  pp.  17-31. 

2  Patten,  Heredity  and  Social  Progress,  chapter  iii. 


CIVILIZATION   AND   EDUCATION  67 

With  every  item  of  inheritance  actually  possessed,  util- 
ized, assimilated,  change  takes  place  in  the  soul  of  the 
heir.  Most  of  the  changes  may  be  slight,  too  slight  for 
observation,  but  the  sum  of  the  changes,  their  direction, 
their  influence,  and  the  nature  of  the  series  are  unmis- 
takable. 

Even  adult  men  are  educable  and  often  educated  by  new 
heritage.  We  are  all  familiar  with  the  phenomenon  of  the 
poor  person  gradually  or  suddenly  acquiring  or  receiving 
riches.  Proceeding  from  two  to  three  dollars  a  day;  from 
nothing  in  the  bank  to  a  thousand  dollars  saved ;  from  pov- 
erty to  affluence ;  from  homelessness  to  family  and  land  ; 
from  subjection  and  irresponsibility  to  power  and  obligation  ; 
from  ignorance  to  some  knowledge  ;  from  little  knowledge 
to  great ;  from  awkwardness  to  skill ;  from  fault  and  folly 
to  virtue  and  judgment :  whatever  be  the  stages  of  progress, 
each  new  stage  in  change  is  invariably  accompanied  by 
change  in  the  soul.  The  person  who  is  just  the  same  as  before 
is  unknown  and  inconceivable.  The  science  of  human  nature 
is  so  far  advanced  that  from  every  change  we  expect  what 
we  call  a  "result."1  We  expect  the  man  grown  famous 
to  be  increased  in  self-confidence,  and  the  man  grown  rich 
to  be  increased  in  authoritativeness.  We  have,  in  fact,  a 
complete  catalogue  of  labels  ready  for  the  inventory  of  the 
effects  of  change  :  conceit,  egotism,  breadth,  pride,  arrogance, 
generosity,  etc.  Some  results  we  call  good,  others  bad ;  but 
all  of  them  we  recognize  as  familiar  evidences  of  education. 

Unfortunately,  these  changes  do  not  always  lead  in 
the  direction  commended  by  society.  We  speak,  there- 
fore, of  being  "well "  or  "badly  "  educated  ;  and,  in  gen- 
eral, we  agree  that  to  be  well  educated  is  to  be  educated 

1  Royce,  Outlines  of  Psychology,  p.  375.  His  classification  of  mental 
phenomena  under  the  three  heads  of  sensitiveness,  docility,  and  initia- 
tive ;  that  of  Tarde,  Social  Laws,  under  the  heads  of  repetition,  opposition, 
and  adaptation ;  and  that  in  this  text,  intelligence,  efficiency,  and  moral- 
ity; should  display  the  modes  of  psychology,  of  sociology,  and  of  edu- 
cation in  dealing  with  the  same  phenomena. 


68  .  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

in  such  a  manner  as  to  repeat  the  qualities  of  the  best 
of  times  past  and  present  or  to  anticipate  the  qualities 
that  the  faith  of  common  humanity  presents  as  certain 
to  characterize  the  society  of  the  future,  while  to  be 
badly  educated  is  to  manifest  the  qualities  of  the  worst, 
or  to  resurrect  the  qualities  that  the  verdict  of  common 
humanity  condemned  and  thereby  destroyed  in.  the 
society  of  the  past.  Once  all  men  were  thieves  :  in  our" 
loose  speech,  we  allow  ourselves  to  say  that  a  youth  may 
now  be  educated  into  the  thief.  Chastity  has  become  a 
female  virtue ;  and  will  yet  become  the  common  virtue 
of  men :  a  youth  may  now  be  educated  in  that  virtue. 

So  constituted  is  the  human  mind,  however,  that 
almost  always  we  think  of  the  good  rather  than  of  the 
bad  kind  of  anything  that  has  more  than  one  kind. 
"This  was  a  man,"  said  Shakespeare.1  "Take  him  for 
all  in  all,  we  shall  not  look  upon  his  like  again."  The 
poet  meant,  and  we  recognize,  a  good  man.  So  when  we 
speak  of  education,  by  common  usage  and  acceptance, 
we  mean  the  good  education.  Similarly,  civilization  has 
its  good  and  its  evil  meanings.  If  the  "  city  is  civiliza- 
tion," a  common  adage,  the  profit  thereof  may  indeed 
be  challenged  as  to  whether  it  offsets  the  loss  to  man- 
kind. There  is  a  good  civilization ;  and  there  is  a  bad. 
Marcus  Aurelius  could  no  more  save  Roman  civilization 
than  Lot  could  save  Sodom.  And  yet,  though  both  good 
and  bad  civilizations  were  and  are  realities,  when  we 
speak  of  civilization,  we  mean  that  which  is  good.2 

If  it  be  asked,  how  civilization  in  seeking  to  protect  the 
unfit  from  the  operation  of  natural  law  can  be  evil,  we 
must  reply  sadly  that  many  of  the  unfit  are  morally  unfit ; 
whom  civilization  perforce  keeps  alive.  Of  this,  the  cured 
and  unrepentant  victims  of  the  social  evil  are  conspicuous 

1  Julius  Ccesar,  act  v. 

3  This  is  in  obedience  to  the  familiar  social  law  of  optimism.  Cf. 
Ross,  Social  Control,  pp.  154-55. 


CIVILIZATION   AND   EDUCATION  69 

examples.  The  very  triumphs  of  medicine  and  of  surgery 
often  restore  to  their  deadly  work  in  society  those  whose 
mission  is  the  injury  of  mankind. 

The  education  that  is  good  conspires  with  the  civiliza- 
tion that  is  good  to  redeem  man  from  his  past,  from  the 
world,  from  himself,  for  the  future,  for  the  larger  life, 
for  the  infinite  heart  whence  man  came.1 

1  Drummond,  Ascent  «f  Man,  p.  56. 


CHAPTER   IV 

PERSONAL   SUCCESS    AND    FAILURE    IN   LIFE 

'T  is  not  in  mortals  to  command  success, 

But  we  '11  do  more,  Sempronius ;  we  '11  deserve  it. 

ADDISON,  Goto,  I,  ii. 

The  anguish  of  the  lost  ones  of  this  world  is  not  fear  of  punishment.  It  was  and  is 
the  misery  of  having  quenched  a  light  brighter  than  the  sun ;  the  intolerable  sense  of 
being  sunk ;  the  remorse  of  knowing  that  they  were  not  what  they  might  have  been.  — 
ROBERTSON,  Sermons,  Lukt  x. 

For  my  part,  I  sympathize  sincerely  with  all  failures,  with  the  victims  of  society,  with 
those  who  have  fallen,  with  the  imprisoned,  with  the  hopeless,  with  those  who  have  been 
stained  by  verdicts  of  guilty,  and  with  those  who,  in  the  moment  of  passion,  have  destroyed, 
as  with  a  blow,  the  future  of  their  own  lives.  —  INGERSOLL,  Crime  against  Criminals. 

THE  purpose  of  systematic  education  is  to  develop  a  suc- 
cessful life.  But  what  is  a  successful  life  ?  What  is  suc- 
cess ?  To  secure  or  to  endure  systematic  education  is  so 
far  to  be  successful;  and  yet  the  thoroughly  educated 
are  not  always  successful  in  life.  The  school  is  not  life, 
as  commonly  understood,  but  preparation  for  life.1 

What  proportion  of  human  beings  are  successful  ? 
The  answer  is  entirely  a  matter  of  standards  and  of  defi- 
nitions. It  may  be  profitable  to  inquire  briefly  into  the 
subject. 

The  Arabians  said,  "Call  no  man  successful  until  his 
death."  The  same  thought  may  be  found  in  the  Egyp- 
tian Book  of  the  Dead.2  Even  then  the  verdict  may  be 
premature.  In  truth,  it  is  not  for  man,  in  any  serious 
sense,  to  pass  upon  this  matter.  "Judge  not,  that  ye  be 
not  judged"8  applies  to  this  as  well  as  to  every  other 

1  Life,  cf.  Leib,  body,  implies  fullness  of  life,  adult  life,  maturity,  the 
pragmatic  stage,  action.  Rosenkranz,  Science  of  Education^  passim. 
The  school  is  not  life,  but  leisure. 

1  Myers,  The  Oldest  Book  in  the  World,  p.  101. 

1  Jesus,  quoted  by  Matthew,  Gospel,  chapter  vii,  i. 


PERSONAL   SUCCESS   AND    FAILURE    IN    LIFE     71 

aspect  of  our  relations  to  our  fellow  men.  "  Do  not  judge 
by  appearances,"  at  any  rate,  as  the  proverb  says.  Nei- 
ther judge  by  the  general  verdict.  Reputation  has  no 
dependable  relation  to  success,  or  to  character,  or  to  fact. 
A  Roman  poet,1  two  thousand  years  ago,  exposed  the 
valuelessness  of  rumor. 

Success  is  not  always  a  matter  of  the  entire  life.  The 
greatness  of  Gladstone  was  not  of  single  acts  or  of  a 
single  epoch ;  he  grew  with  the  years ;  only  old  age 
could  limit  his  ever-increasing  usefulness.  Not  so  with 
that  abler  and  perhaps  also  more  important  contempo- 
rary, Bismarck,  who  outlived  his  own  historical  self. 
Napoleon,  who  in  all  the  annals  of  mankind  yields  place 
only  to  Caesar,  saw  Waterloo  after  Austerlitz,  and  dis- 
played at  St.  Helena  the  petty  weaknesses  of  human 
nature.  The  Roman,  whose  greatness  in  action  is  in- 
comprehensible, was  perhaps  fortunate  in  his  death. 

Some  of  the  great  drew  upon  "  the  two  worlds  "  of  truth 
and  of  falsity,  of  fact  and  of  fiction,  of  love  and  of  hate,  in 
order  to  win.  Of  course,  they  doubled  thereby  their  present 
resources,  for  the  liar,  the  visionary,  and  the  murderer  escape 
the  limitations  of  the  truth-speaker,  the  man  of  fact,  and  the 
lover  of  his  kind.  Of  them,  history,  as  its  ethical  standards 
rise,  is  constantly  revising  its  verdict.2 

Success  is  not  always  a  matter  of  general  accomplish- 
ment. Washington,  who  is  revered  by  us  perhaps  beyond 
any  other  man  excepting  Lincoln,  was  successful  alike 
as  a  soldier,  as  a  legislator,  as  an  executive,  and  as  a 
man  of  affairs.  Not  so  with  Daniel  Webster,  who  had 
but  one  surpassing  power,  the  persuasion  of  men  to 
high  thinking  in  the  State.  So  Luther  excelled  only  in 
the  construction  of  a  new  Church.  Dante,  Cromwell, 
Kant,  Marian  Evans,  were  all  comparatively  narrow. 
But  few  may,  like  Alexander,  reconstruct  a  world. 

1  Ovid,  Metamorphoses,  book  iii. 

2  Lea,  "  Ethical  Values,"  American  Historical  Review,  January,  1904. 


72  EDUCATION    AND    SOCIETY 

Success  is  not  always  a  matter  involving  conformity 
in  all  particulars  to  the  personal  morality  of  the  times. 
The  plain  people  have  been  extremely  lenient  with  those 
able  to  render  large  social  service.  There  is  perhaps 
something  in  the  wear  and  tear  of  body  and  of  soul  in 
great  affairs,  that  weakens  and  distresses  the  great  man 
in  his  personal  relations.  Abraham,  Solomon,  Pericles, 
Shakespeare,  Goethe,  Byron,  Franklin,  rendered  their 
services  to  mankind,  and  passed  on,  forgiven.1 

We  number  among  the  great  some  of  the  sinners 
and  the  criminals  of  their  countries  and  ages.  Many  a 
prophet  might  have  gone  to  his  king  with  that  awful, 
righteous,  and  final  sentence,  "  Thou  art  the  man." 2 
Knowing  as  we  do  that  sometimes  the  poisoner,  the  mur- 
derer, the  adulterer,  the  drunkard,  the  thief,  the  forger, 
the  liar,  the  traitor,  the  miser,  the  slayer  of  nations,  the 
debaucher  of  peoples,  has  not  failed  of  success,  educators 
must  face  many  an  embarrassment. 

Success  is  not  always  a  matter  of  recognition  at  the 
time.  What  Greek  dreamed  that  Aristotle  would  rule 
the  intellectual  world  for  two  thousand  years  ? 3  To  his 
own  generation,  Shakespeare  was  only  a  good  business 
man.  Perhaps  he  scarcely  suspected  more  himself.  We, 
not  his  contemporaries,  have  made  the  fame  of  Galileo. 
./Eschylus,  Sophocles,  and  Euripides  loomed  large  in 
their  own  day,  in  their  own  little  city ;  Michael  Angelo 
and  Raphael  were  the  great  artists  of  their  times ;  all 
Frenchmen  knew  Voltaire  and  Victor  Hugo  ;  but  in  their 
own  lifetimes,  Keats,  Poe,  and  Whitman  had  only  small 

1  Many  "  true  "  biographies  (i.  e.  those  which  expose  the  weaknesses, 
the  errors,  even  the  vices,  of  great  men)  are  often  really  false  because 
the  perspective  of  values  is  false.   To  forgive  is  not  to  ignore ;  and  to 
ignore  is  not  to  condone. 

2  2  Samuel  xii,  7.    The  rebuke  of  David  by  Nathan. 

3  There  are  certain  signs  of  an  Aristotelian  "  revival."   Cf.  Pollock, 
History  of  the  Science  of  Politics.  Turner,  History  of  Philosophy.  Aristotle 
was  never  confused  as  to  the  nature  of  success. 


PERSONAL   SUCCESS   AND    FAILURE    IN    LIFE     73 

audiences  compared  with  those  after  their  bones  rested 
in  the  grave. 

And  success  is  seldom  evidenced  by  accumulations  of 
property.  Who  cares  whether  Copernicus  or  Columbus 
left  fortunes  ?  Croesus  made  Caesar,  and  Maecenas  made 
Virgil,  so  they  say;  and  therefore  we  remember  Croesus 
and  Maecenas.  Jesus  had  not  "  where  to  lay  His  head."  1 

It  is  possible  to  defy  one's  age  and  to  be  remembered 
as  its  peculiar  glory.  Socrates  drank  the  hemlock  as 
ordered  by  Athens ;  and  John  Brown  died  upon  the 
scaffold  of  the  State  of  Virginia.  Will  their  names  ever 
perish  ?  It  is  not  even  necessary  to  be  either  right  or 
successful.  Robert  E.  Lee  was  wrong  in  war  and  failed 
to  win ;  and  yet  we  love  him  and  count  him  among  the 
great.  Shelley  was  wrong  in  his  morals,  and  often  in  his 
moral  teaching,  as  was  Byron  also ;  yet  who  will  deny 
either  his  fame  or  his  success  ? 

I  have  written  of  the  greatest  of  mankind.  Each 
conveys  some  lesson,  whether  the  individual  be  Homer, 
Buddha,  Confucius,  Moses,  ^Esop,  Paul,  Caesar,  Augustus, 
Attila,  Charlemagne,  Elizabeth,  Louis  Fourteenth,  Crom- 
well, Peter,  Catherine  Second,  Frederick,  Jefferson, 
Thackeray,  Scott,  Errferson. 

I  might  write  of  lesser  persons,  such  as  we  meet 
every  day.  We  know,  as  a  matter  of  common  sense  we 
must  know,  that  deathless  fame  among  men  is  by  no 
means  proof  of  real  success.  The  "  monuments  "  of  the 
Nile  Valley  and  of  Mesopotamia  record  the  names  of 
few  save  the  kings.  Many  of  these  kings  were  almost 
total  failures.  The  immortal  Cleopatra  was  a  failure. 
Beyond  peradventure  of  doubt,  thousands  on  thousands 
of  Egyptians  and  of  Mesopotamians  lived  successful 
lives.  Who  believes  that  the  only  record  is  that  of 
earth  ?  Only  he  who,  believing  this,  believes  also  that 
life  is  not  worth  while,  though  a  success.  No  educator 

1  Matthew  viii,  20.   A  saying  of  Jesus'. 


74  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

can  sincerely  deny  the  possibility  at  least  of  some  other 
record,  for  to  deny  some  other  existence,  some  other 
fame,  is  to  deny  the  substantial  value  of  education.1 

Education  is  not  an  end  in  itself.  Life,  however,  is 
such  an  end ;  life,  not  living  merely.  Life  is  an  end  in 
itself,  because  life  has  no  conceivable  end.2  To  con- 
tribute to  the  fullness  of  life  is  the  end  of  education, 
which  has  limits  only  in  its  own  methods  and  in  the 
educability  of  the  individual.  When  education  has  done 
all  that  is  possible  to  itself,  it  necessarily  terminates  in 
its  own  end,  which  therefore  must  be  considered  as 
mediate  to  life.  Obviously,  therefore,  true  success,  which 
is  the  only  kind  of  success  to  be  regarded  by  the  edu- 
cator, is  largeness  of  life,  which  of  necessity  is  a  notion 
varying  with  all  varieties  of  individuals.  And  yet  the 
thoughtful  must  recognize  that  to  live  narrowly,  to  live 
for  the  day,  to  live  unrelated  to  the  great  institutions 
and  forces  of  society  and  to  one's  individual  fellow  men, 
is  to  live  but  in  part  and  not  vigorously.  The  difficulty 
of  the  social  philosopher  is  to  devise  a  system  of  educa- 
tion that  arouses  and  organizes  activity  in  insight  and 
outlook,  and  thereby  produces  the  thoughtful. 

For,  in  real  life,  most  persons  are  not  thoughtful,  and 
therefore  are  not  essentially  successful.  When  from 
among  those  reputed  successful,  we  have  eliminated  the 
many  who  have  gone  upward  from  below  to  notoriety 
without  worth  and  to  power  without  value  to  themselves 
or  to  other  men,  the  remainder  is  very  small.  Is  it,  then, 
true  that  all  of  those  of  no  repute  and  of  those  reputed 
to  be  unsuccessful  are  really  failures  ?  Of  course  not ; 
but  the  presumption  is  against  them.  We  are  dealing 
here  with  a  matter  of  much  subtlety.  Dante  lived  so 

1  "  If  there  be  no  second  life,  —pitch  this  one  high," 

cried  Matthew  Arnold  ( The  Better  Part).  In  the  form  stated,  the  non 
sequitur  is  obvious  and  significant. 

1  Plato  argued  this  out  to  a  finality,  quoting  Socrates.  See  especially 
the  Phcedo,  49,  et passim. 


PERSONAL   SUCCESS   AND   FAILURE    IN    LIFE     75 

deep  in  life  as  not  wholly  to  be  known  to  his  contem- 
poraries. The  immortal  Italian  was  not  a  successful  man 
of  his  times.  He  appeared  to  them  a  failure.  No  doubt 
among  men  now  there  are  thousands  on  thousands  who 
live  deep  in  life,  a  silent  folk,  building  themselves  and 
supporting  others.  The  true  success  of  most  of  them 
will  never  be  revealed  on  earth  in  their  own  days  or 
after  their  death.  And  yet,  according  to  the  measure  of 
their  worth  and  of  their  service,  we  ought  to  call  them 
successful.  Most  men  and  women  are  failures,  and  most 
of  us  know  that  we  are. 

This  fact  appears  upon  consideration,  for  unhappily  it 
is  susceptible  of  proof  by  demonstration. 

Of  property,  few  leave  at  death  more  than  they  re- 
ceived at  birth;  and  many  have  received  from  others 
more  than  they  have  returned.  This  is  not  always  a 
matter  of  fault,  though  it  is  a  matter  of  fact. 

Of  religion,  few  manifest  the  fruits  by  the  peaceful 
works  of  the  spirit.  "Pure  religion  and  undefiled  before 
God  and  the  Father  is  this,  To  visit  the  fatherless 
and  widows  in  their  affliction,  and  to  keep  himself  un- 
spotted from  the  world."  *  Were  this  not  an  irreligious 
age,  as  it  unmistakably  is,2  there  might  be  some  discus- 
sion upon  the  point  as  to  whether  most  individuals  are 
religious.  Not  to  confuse  morality  with  religion,  let  it  be 
observed  that  the  decline  of  charity  and  the  increase  of 
worldliness  are  too  patent  to  permit  discussion.  Con- 
sequently, whatever  may  be  the  success  or  failure  of 
most  persons,  considered  broadly,  their  failure  in  religion 
must  be  admitted.3 

1  Literally,  Worship  clean  and  stainless  before  the  God  and  Father  is 
this  very  thing,  —  to  watch  over  orphans  and  widows  in  their  distress,  to 
guard  one's  self  spotless  from  the  times.   James  Epistle,  i,  27.    In  that  Ro- 
man age,  the  passage  was  most  significant.    It  is  scarcely  less  significant 
in  ours. 

2  Per  contra,  Donald,  The  Expansion  of  Religion,  passim. 

3  This  failure  of  the  many  in  religion  must  not  be  taken  as  a  failure  of 
religion  itself. 


76  EDUCATION   AND    SOCIETY 

Evidence  of  an  irreligious  age  is  seen  in  the  fact  that 
in  most  cities,  should  all  the  people  desire  to  attend  worship, 
not  one  in  five  or  in  some  instances  not  one  in  ten  could  find 
seats,  while  nowhere  is  it  necessary  for  all  the  churches 
to  resort  to  successive  services  with  admission  by  card  to 
prevent  repetition  of  attendance.  Again,  this  popular  failure 
in  religion  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  the  church,  which  symbol- 
izes religion,  no  longer  receives  the  services  and  products  of 
the  finest  artistic  talents.  And  it  is  seen  in  the  disappear- 
ance of  the  church  universal.  Men  are  no  longer  born  into 
the  church.  A  majority  of  Americans  live  and  die  churchless  ; 
and  the  churchless  man  or  woman  is  very  seldom  religious. 

In  marriage,  in  home,  and  in  family,  most  men  and 
some  women  are  failures.  Divorce,  often  amply  justified 
by  sins  and  even  by  crimes,  prepares  the  way  for  bigamy 
and  even  for  polyandry  and  polygamy.  Often  divorce 
is  avoided  only  by  continuance  in  unhappy  marriage, 
so  profaned  by  faithless  husband  or  wife  as  to  be  unholy. 
Not  a  few  married  men  and  fathers  provide  first  for 
themselves  and  last  for  their  wives  and  children.  Home 
life  for  most  persons  is  no  longer  an  entirety,  a  force 
in  itself.  No  mere  tenant  can  feel  a  deep  affection  for 
his  house  and  land  ;  he  moves  too  often.  Brothers 
and  sisters  part  more  easily  in  the  twentieth  century 
in  America  than  ever  they  did  in  the  dark  ages  of 
Western  Europe.  Too  many  men  build  houses,  not 
homes  ;  marry  women,  not  wives  ;  rear  children,  not 
families.  The  man  and 'woman  of  property  and  of  cul- 
ture, marrying  and  bringing  into  life  a  normal  number 
of  children,1  creating  a  home  and  establishing  a  family, 

1  There  is  a  very  general  misconception  of  the  functions  of  repro- 
duction among  mammals.  Almost  the  entire  burden  rests  upon  the 
female.  The  appearance  of  a  second,  a  third,  or  a  fourth  child  weaker 
than  the  preceding  is  a  neglected  signal.  The  birth  of  constantly  stronger 
children  is  a  neglected  command.  The  particular  norm  for  the  particular 
parents  is  determined  physically  by  such  indications  as  these.  The 
average  norm  for  the  Teutonic  race  may  be  taken  as  four  children  born 


PERSONAL   SUCCESS    AND    FAILURE    IN   LIFE     77 

are  confronting  the  solid  antagonsim  of  their  class.1 
Few  such  persons  care  to  rear  families,  while  the  igno- 
rant, propertyless  masses  cannot  do  so  in  their  poverty 
and  ignorance  in  opposition  to  modern  economic  forces. 
They  multiply ;  but  they  do  not  multiply  homes. 

In  education  and  in  culture,  the  failure  of  most  per- 
sons is  too  familiar  for  discussion.  Few  ever  realize  their 
powers.  Few  ever  learn  the  best  that  is  known,  thought, 
and  done  in  the  world.  Prematurely  arrested  in  develop- 
ment, shut  away,  often  willingly,  from  art  and  knowledge, 
they  exist  in  superstition  and  in  dependence,  the  slaves 
of  the  world,  unrelated  things  in  an  imperfect  cosmos. 

Of  government,  most  men  and  women  know  nothing, 
even  in  democratic  America.  Why,  then,  does  the  Re- 
public proceed  ?  Because  every  society,  once  in  motion, 
tends  to  increase  in  numbers  and  proportionately  in 
wealth  "  to  the  point  of  diminishing  returns,"  2  a  point 
in  most  regions  not  yet  reached  by  us ;  and  because 
from  the  nature  of  the  social  conflict,  the  strong  tend 
to  rise  to  the  mastery  for  which  they  are  competent. 
Even  democracy  cannot  prevent  this. 

Of  course,  the  failures  of  men  in  business  are  so 
numerous  as  to  have  passed  into  a  proverb,  —  "  Ninety- 
five  per  cent  of  men  fail  in  business."  This  has  been 
a  matter  of  statistics.  Syndicates,  trusts,  corporations, 
rise  solely  by  the  defeat  of  competitors.  The  successful 
become  multimillionaires,  magnates,  capitalists;  the  un- 
successful become  their  clerks ;  and  the  masses  grind 
on.  In  what  ?  Fortunately,  the  grinding  of  the  multi- 
tudes is  in  the  various  cultural,  commercial,  and  domestic 
arts.  This  it  is  that  saves  us,  for  as  a  people  we  are  im- 
proving in  scientific  knowledge  and  in  technical  skill. 

three  years  apart,  with  the  mother  passing  from  twenty-four  to  thirty- 
three  years  of  age.    Cf.  Sociological  Papers,  ii,  "  Eugenics  "  by  Galton. 

1  Rae,  Sociological  Theory  of  Capital,  edited  by  Mixter,  p.  358. 

2  Walker,  Political  Economy,  pp.  51-54. 


78  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

What,  then,  is  it  to  be  successful  ?  The  foundation  of 
it  is  health  of  mind,  a  large  view  of  things,  vital,  effect- 
ive, vigorous  relations  to  the  world  outside  one's  self,  — 
a  health  that  is  conditioned,  in  part  at  least,  upon  one 
side  or  aspect,  by  health  and  by  strength  of  body.  And 
yet  some  have  been  successful  despite  ill-health,  mani- 
festing, indeed,  the  noblest  evidence  of  character  in 
struggle  against  physical  weakness  and  disease.  Some 
inheriting  poor  physiques  have  by  intelligence  built  for 
themselves  sound  bodies.  But  to  return :  needlessly  to 
sacrifice  health  bears  witness  to  deficiencies  of  intelli- 
gence and  of  will,  even  of  heart,  for  he  who  is  an  invalid 
because  of  follies  has  carelessly  burdened  his  friends. 
Though  he  be  rich,  he  is  still  a  total  loss  to  the  economic 
world,  rendering  it  no  return  for  its  rents,  interests, 
dividends,  and  profits. 

I  call  him  successful  who  numbered  a  sufficiency  of 
days  ;  who  found  a  deep  satisfaction  in  life ;  who  learned 
sympathy,  patience,  fortitude,  courage,  through  trials ; 
who  brought  himself  to  order  and  the  things  of  the  world 
to  order  in  relation  to  himself ;  who  promised  within  his 
power  of  performance  and  changed  not,  though  promising 
to  his  own  hurt;1  who  injured  none  more  than  himself, 
and  desired  not  to  injure  even  himself ;  who  rendered 
to  the  world  in  product  and  in  service  more  than  he 
received  ;  who  lived  as  celibate  in  chastity  or  as  husband 
in  continence ;  who  made  of  his  body  a  temple  for  his 
soul ;  who  loved  truth  and  pursued  it ;  desired  freedom 
and  granted  it ;  was  first  just  and  then  merciful ;  first 
honest  and  then  generous  ;  became  disciple  and  apostle 
of  the  laws  of  essential  Nature ;  and  rejoiced  to  be  a 
servant  of  God.  Such  a  successful  man  is  a  living  wit- 
ness that  material  wealth  should  be  a  consequent,  not 
a  cause  ;  and  that  it  is  not  even  a  necessary  consequent. 
After  his  death,  his  life  becomes  a  delightful  memory. 

1  David,  Psalm  xv,  4. 


PERSONAL   SUCCESS   AND    FAILURE   IN   LIFE     79 

And  him  I  call  unsuccessful  who  by  fault  of  his  own 
failed  of  sufficiency  of  days  to  bring  his  soul  to  complete- 
ness ;  who  found  no  meaning  and  satisfaction  in  life  ; 
who  grew  hard,  impatient,  timid,  fretful ;  who  became 
erratic  and  disorderly,  and  set  the  world  about  him  in  dis- 
order; who  in  anxiety  for  the  morrow  promised  more 
than  his  power  to  fulfill,  and  being  hurt,  shrank  from  pay- 
ing all ;  who  injured  himself  or  others,  debasing  life  from 
its  purposes  of  joy  and  delight,  —  purposes  inalienably 
the  property  of  all  living  things ;  because  of  whom  the 
world  was  poorer  in  material  wealth  ;  who  by  unchastity 
and  incontinence  defiled  life  at  its  fountains  ;  who  forced 
his  soul  to  abide  in  a  body  degraded  into  a  mire  or  ethe- 
realized  into  a  shadow  or  converted  into  a  prison ;  whose 
yea  was  not  yea,  nor  his  nay,  nay ;  who  accepted  ser- 
vitude and  enforced  it;  founded  mercy  upon  injustice 
and  generosity  upon  dishonesty ;  preached  and  practiced 
the  natural  laws  of  the  elements  and  of  the  brutes ;  and 
declined  the  service  of  God. 

Clearly,  and  without  exposition,  the  truth  appears 
that  to  be  successful,  one  must  be  intelligent,  efficient, 
and  righteous  ;  and  it  needs  no  argument  to  show  that  in 
the  final  analysis  intelligence,  efficiency,  and  righteous- 
ness are  one  quality,  goodness.  This,  however,  being  un- 
defined, does  not  necessarily  carry  correct  and  adequate 
meaning.1  We  mean  not  good  as  antithetical  to  evil,  not 
good  as  antithetical  to  bad,  but  good  as  worth  while  be- 
cause it  realizes  life ;  and,  therefore,  we  mean  good  as 
antithetical  to  harm.  Finally,  upon  all  these  considera- 
tions, and  upon  many  others  that  are  derived  from  com- 
mon sense,  we  know  that  to  be  successful  is  to  fill  life 
to  overflowing,  while  to  fail  is  to  deny  life  content,  mean- 
ing, use.2  The  application  of  this  principle  becomes 

1  Nietzsche,  Genealogy  of  Morals,  edited  by  Tilly  and  Houseman,  p.  8. 

2  "  While  from  him  that  hath  not  shall  be  taken  even  that  which  he 
seemeth  to   have."   Jesus,  Luke,   Gospel  viii,   18.   The  context  shows 


So  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

increasingly  easy  and  clear  to  (the  candid  who  desire 
success  and  depart  from  the  pathways  of  failures  ever 
crossing  the  "narrow  way  unto  life."  * 

It  would  be  presumptuous  for  humanity  to  expect  to 
know  either  the  why  of  life  or  the  object  assigned  to  us 
by  the  Creator ;  and  very  few  individuals  have  dis- 
played the  desire  to  know  either  the  final  "whence  "  or 
the  final  "why."2  The  goal  is  not  in  sight.  We  may 
believe  as  Wordsworth  sings,  — 

"  The  soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's  star, 
Hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting, 
And  cometh  from  afar."8 

But  though  we  inquire  with  Darwin  what  is  the  origin 
of  the  physical  body,  and  expect  to  learn  the  truth  some 
day,  we  do  not  expect  in  this  finite  life  to  learn  when  or 
how  we  were  set  apart  from  the  infinite,  or  when  or  how 
we  are  to  return  again.4 

The  soul  in  humanity  that  conditions  the  conscience 
of  every  individual,  whatever  be  its  origin,  whatever  be 
its  coloring  by  physical  being,  knows  true  success  and 
discriminates  it  from  failure.  And  every  educator  owes 

unmistakably  that  understanding  of  life  is  the  subject  under  discussion. 
Consider  also  the  parable  of  the  talents,  Matthew,  Gospel  xxv,  15  et  seq. 
Jesus  saw  and  taught  perfectly  the  meaning  of  success  and  failure,  and 
reiterated  the  principle  involved. 

i  Jesus,  Matthew,  Gospel  \\\,  14.  Sri  .  .  .  T«e\iju/u6ioj  ^  68&r  fi  a.-irdyovffa 
€«j  TV  ^v.  Because  confined  (literally,  pressed  in)  the  road  leading  into 
the  life  (of  doing  unto  others  as  one  desires  them  to  do  unto  one's  self). 
This  teaching  immediately  follows  the  "  Golden  Rule."  The  pressing  na- 
ture of  such  a  course  in  life  is  due  to  the  necessity  to  limit  one's  freedom 
by  constant  consideration  and  sympathy  for  others  and  by  frequent 
self-denial.  And  yet  this  is  the  very  way  to  save  one's  own  life.  Jesus, 
Matthew,  Gospel  xvi,  25. 

»  Tyler,  The  Whence  and  the  Whither  of  Man  ;  James,  Immortality. 

'  Intimations  of  Immortality. 

4  Jesus  seems  to  have  meant  us  to  understand  that  the  soul  comes 
immediately  from  God  and  not  via  heredity,  in  parts,  or  via  transmigra- 
tion, as  a  unit  This  is  consonant  with  his  view  of  the  soul  after  death. 
Per  contra,  Beecher,  Conflict  of  Ages,  p.  242  ;  Hall,  Adolescence,  chapter  x. 


PERSONAL   SUCCESS    AND   FAILURE    IN    LIFE    81 

it  to  every  pupil  to  be  certain  that  he  discriminates  suc- 
cess and  failure  and  teaches  his  pupil  so  to  discriminate. 
Moreover,  every  individual  must  be  careful  as  to  follow- 
ing examples  and  taking  advice.  Bitter  truth  though 
this  may  be,  the  failures  cannot  give  good  advice,  nor 
are  their  examples  either  to  be  accepted  or  rejected,  but 
to  be  ignored.  The  most  successful  give  the  least  ad- 
vice ;  and  their  lives  are  often  so  high  and  remote  as  to 
be  beyond  the  vision  of  others,  who  are  denied,  there- 
fore, knowledge  of  them  as  examples.  It  should  be  a 
principle  of  life,  first  to  determine  whether  this  or  that 
man  is  successful,  truly  successful,  in  affairs  worth 
while,  —  marriage,  parentage,  business,  property,  gov- 
ernment, religion,  culture,  the  practical  arts  and  know- 
ledges, —  before  accepting  him  as  an  example,  or  even 
considering  his  advice.  This  involves  individual  thought, 
and  upon  proper  occasion,  action  that  flies  in  the  face  of 
all  social  imitation.1 

Such  self-alienation  from  society,  from  one's  own 
friends,  from  one's  own  past,  is  absolutely  essential  to 
the  life  of  continuous  progress. 

1  Tarde,  Social  Laws,  chapter  ii;  Ross,  Social  Control,  chapter  v  ;  Le 
Bon,  Psychology  of  Socialism,  pp.  89-103 ;  Baldwin,  "  The  Final  Con- 
flict," Mental  Development :  Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations,  p.  539. 


CHAPTER  V 

EDUCATION  IN  RELATION  TO   PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE 
MORALITY  AND  TO  SOCIAL  AND  PERSONAL  PROGRESS 

Education  is  the  most  important  subject  in  which  we  as  a  people  can  be  engaged.  — 
LINCOLN,  Sangamon  Address. 

We  should  so  live  and  labor  in  our  time  that  what  came  to  us  as  seed  may  go  to  the 
next  generation  as  blossom,  and  that  what  came  to  us  as  blossom  may  go  to  them  as  fruit. 
This  is  what  we  mean  by  progress.  —  BBECHER,  Life  Thoughts. 

Always  add,  always  proceed :  neither  stand  still  nor  go  back  nor  deviate.  Be  always 
displeased  at  what  thou  art.  If  thou  sayest,  "  I  have  enough,"  thou  diest.  —  SAINT 
AUGUSTINE,  Sermon,  De  verb,  apost.  (p.  196,  Quarks'  Emblems). 

A  VASE  of  potter's  clay  stood  in  rain  and  in  sun.  There 
it  had  rested  since  the  time  whereof  the  memory  of  man 
ran  not  to  the  contrary.  One  day  water  pure  as  crystal 
began  to  well  up  within  it.  Day  after  day  the  water 
rose  more  and  more  freely,  till  at  length  it  began  to 
overflow.  Thus  the  vase  became  a  well  of  water.  In 
this  manner,  the  soul  came  to  fill  and  to  overflow  the 
creature  man. 

When  came  the  water  that  overflowed  the  vase  was 
mystery.  When  comes  the  life  that  overflows  the  flesh 
is  mystery.  All  that  we  know  is  the  fact.  But  we  feel 
that  the  soul  springing  up  in  us  is  the  life  eternal.  We 
cannot  conceive  its  beginning  or  its  end ;  nor  can  we 
know  its  nature.  The  mystery  of  the  beginning  and  of 
the  end  and  of  the  nature  of  man  we  say  is  of  God,  who 
is  the  sum  and  the  essence  of  all  mystery,  yet  more 
real  than  any  visible,  tangible,  spatial,  temporal  reality. 
Visions,  truths,  wisdom,  understanding,  morals,  inven- 
tions, ideas,  come  flooding  into  man ;  and  whence  ?  We 
say  from  God.  And  whither?  We  dare  not  try  to  answer. 
And  why  ?  To  serve  the  purposes  of  God. 


RELATION   TO   MORALITY   AND   PROGRESS      83 

Who  is  God  ? 

A  universe  answers,  "  I  am." 

Man  hears,  "I  am." 

Definition?  That  is  unthinkable.  There  are  some 
who  call  whatever  of  the  universe  is  understood  by  them 
knowledge,  and  the  rest  they  call  mystery  or  God ;  and 
there  are  some  who  call  whatever  they  understand  God, 
and  whatever  they  cannot  understand  they  call  mystery 
or  Devil.1  Who  are  we  to  pronounce  that  for  which  we 
are  not  responsible  good  or  evil  ?  Our  concern  is  solely 
with  and  in  ourselves,  as  individuals  and  as  humanity. 
Therefore,  because  man  can  hear  the  voice  of  "  I  am," 
man  also  knows  himself  as  "  I  am,"  and  becomes  a  living 
soul,  in  the  image  of  "  I  am."  By  this  token,  all  the  sons 
know  the  Father. 

The  animals  of  His  creation  may  be  conscious ;  but 
we  have  no  evidence  that  they  are  self-conscious,  as  at 
times  we  are.  Whatever  be  their  case,  it  is  ours  to  be 
conscious  of  ourselves  and  in  that  consciousness  to  hear 
His  voice  speaking  as  our  conscience. 

The  truth  is  but  slowly  won.  The  friend  grows  upon 
us  in  the  fashion  of  patient  Nature,  by  stages.  We  may 
know  him  only  after  many  years.  Our  education,  too,  is 
very  slow :  it  proceeds  by  invisible  increments.  In  us, 
there  follows  regeneration  after  regeneration ;  each  re- 
generation is  succeeded  by  a  period  when  we  are  weak 
and  docile  after  the  manner  of  little  children,  viewing 
the  new  world  with  reticent  yet  curious  surprise. 

Through  the  education  of  the  individual,  new  truth 
finds  its  way  into  the  world.2  By  one  and  another,  it 
grows  among  men. 

Baldwin,  "  Religion  in  History,"  American  Historical  Review,  Jan., 
1907,  p.  227. 

2  "  Where  two  or  three  are  gathered  together  in  my  name,  there  am 
I  in  the  midst  of  them."  "  I  am  the  way,  the  truth,  and  the  life:  no 
man  cometh  unto  the  Father,  but  by  me."  John,  Gospel  xiv,  6.  Jesus  as 
a  teacher  comes  with  His  doctrine  of  brotherly  love  and  service  where 


84  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

There  is  an  education  that  invisibly  modifies  the  color 
of  life ;  and  there  is  an  education  that  turns  black  to 
white,  darkness  into  light.  In  nature,  the  two  are  one ; 
for  a  change  in  quantity  becomes  a  change  in  quality, 
as  when  heat  is  taken  out  of  water  at  the  freezing  point, 
and  the  fluid  water  becomes  solid  ice. 

By  new  truth,  each  individual  grows  ;  and  by  nothing 
else  whatsoever.  God  has  so  constituted  man  that  he 
grows  upon  truth,  and  that  he  sickens  and  dies  because 
of  superstitions,  lies,  falsities,1  when,  recognizing  them 
as  such,  he  does  not  reject  them  forthwith.  Likewise 
must  society  accept  new  truth  and  reject  old  errors. 

The  process  of  society  is  to  develop  new  institutions 
after  the  need  has  become  strong,  and  to  destroy  old 
institutions  after  their  usefulness  has  ceased.  A  new 
institution  is  always  the  product  of  new  truth  discovered, 
formulated,  interpreted,  taught  in  word  and  represented 
in  deed  at  first  by  some  individual  thinker  and  doer.  An 
old  institution  always  endures  until  cut  away  and  over- 
thrown by  new  institutions. 

"New  occasions   teach   new  duties;  Time   makes  ancient  good 

uncouth ; 

They  must  upward  still,  and  onward,  who  would  keep  abreast  of 
Truth."  2 

Naturally,  man  is  ready  for  new  truth  upon  which 
to  feed  his  soul :  but  each  man  for  himself  discovers 
only  a  little  new  truth.  As  the  lonely  cultivator  of  the 
soil,  without  tools,  without  seeds,  without  markets,  and 
without  neighbors,  can  secure  but  scanty  subsistence, 
so  a  man  unassisted  finds  the  field  of  thought  hard  and 

two  or  three  are  gathered ;  and  each  learns  His  truth.  This  is  true,  of 
necessity,  in  modern  psychology  and  in  modern  sociology,  else  these 
sciences  would  be  such  in  name  only.  In  social  companionship,  we  dis- 
cover the  divine  and  universal  soul. 

1  Ward,  Applied  Sociology,  pp.  117,  235. 

2  Lowell,  The  Present  Crisis. 


RELATION    TO    MORALITY   AND    PROGRESS      85 

sterile  and  small  of  yield.1  Give  the  cultivator  tools, 
seeds,  neighbors,  advice,  and  exchange  of  products;  and 
his  field  will  yield  abundantly,  and  his  house  will  be 
filled  with  goods.  Such  is  human  society.  Give  the 
lonely  thinker  books,  ideas,  companions,  counsel,  and 
opportunity  for  expression ;  and  his  character  will  de- 
velop resources,  and  his  mind  be  filled  with  thoughts. 
Such  is  human  education. 

To  say  that  no  more  may  be  brought  forth  (educated) 
from  a  man  than  was  born  in  him  is  to  utter  a  mere 
combination  of  words.  There  is  no  evidence  to  support 
this  proposition.  Grant  everything  to  historical  physi- 
ology and  to  tradition  ;  and  the  saying  is  still  without 
meaning.  The  nerve  cells,  and  all  other  cells  of  the 
physical  body,  may  be  filled  with  capacities  for  this  and 
that  sensation  or  affection,  handed  down  as  the  heritage 
of  a  million  years  of  ancestral  life  ;  race  may  be  perma- 
nently characterized  fundamentally,  structurally,  and  su- 
perficially in  generation  after  generation ;  and  son  may 
be  like  father,  scion  proceeding  pan  passu  with  stirp :  it 
still  is  obviously  and  essentially  true  that  to  pronounce 
the  embryo  or  infant  potentially  the  man,  and  the  mind 
of  the  babe  potentially  the  mind  of  the  man,  is  really  to 
assert  their  unlikeness  and  their  inequality.  So  immea- 
surably disproportionate  are  the  babe  and  the  man  that 
though  ovum  and  sperm  may  dictate  tendency,  color, 
form,  spirit,  and  norm,  it  is  unthinkable  that  they  dic- 
tate substance  or  content,  whether  of  flesh  or  of  ideas. 
Exactly  as  the  physical  body  grows  by  gathering  fluid, 
cell,  and  tissue  from  the  material  world,  so  the  mind 
must  grow  by  gathering  motive,  idea,  and  notion  from 
the  spiritual  world.2 

1  Mazzini,  Duties  of  Man,  pp.  74,  93  (Venturi,  transl.).  George,  Pro- 
gress and  Poverty,  p.  355. 

1  Lodge,  <;  Life,"  Hibbert  Journal,  mLitteirs  Living  Age,  January  27, 
p.  252, 


86  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

In  this  aspect,  therefore,  education  is  non-existent  and 
impossible.  The  exact  opposite  is  true.  The  man  is  not 
educated  out  of  the  boy;  but  inducted  into  him.  The 
boy  is  grown  by  the  metabolism  of  food  into  the  man ; 
and  education  is  put  into  the  boy.  This  aspect,  however, 
is  only  one  side  of  the  shield  of  truth. 

By  nature,  man  is  spiritually  hungry  for  ideas,  yet  has 
characteristic  tastes  that  govern  his  selection  of  ideas. 
Accepting  as  food  the  agreeable  ideas,  he  grows  upon 
them  ;  and  this  growth  by  ideas  is  education,  formal  and 
informal.  Let  it  not  be  supposed  that  feeding  upon  ideas 
is  mere  accumulation  of  ideas.  Some  ideas  are  remem- 
bered as  such :  others  are  assimilated  beyond  recall  as 
such,  to  function  later  in  the  mode  of  will  as  motives, 
or  in  the  mode  of  feeling  as  ideals,  or  in  the  mode  of  in- 
tellect as  judgments.^  Let  it  not  be  supposed  that  the 
ideas  really  valuable  in  the  education  of  a  man  are  those 
which  he  remembers  as  such  for  recall  in  modo  et  forma. 
These  are  indeed  less  likely  to  be  valuable  than  those 
which,  destroyed  in  form  and  in  mode,  survive  in  the 
higher  powers  of  motive  or  ideal  or  judgment.  Nor,  on 
the  contrary,  let  it  be  supposed  that  the  remembered 
ideas  were  indigestible  but  not  rejectible. 

Most  facts  and  most  propositions  are  absolutely  re- 
jected or  completely  ignored  by  the  mind  to  which  they 
may  be  expressed.  A  few  are  accepted  and  disappear, 
being  perfectly  assimilated.  They  become  part  and  par- 
cel of  the  man  at  the  time  or  for  life,  but  lie  in  him 
beyond  recall  of  consciousness.  They  are  as  completely 
forgotten  as  the  food  of  days  remote.  Other  ideas  per- 
sist, sometimes  for  occasional  recurrence  upon  sugges- 
tion or  recollection,  sometimes  for  periodical  or  even 
familiar  presence  in  consciousness.  What  in  us  is  of 
heredity  we  may  class  within  the  term  instincts;  what 
is  of  occasional  recurrence  upon  recollection  we  may 

1  Bagley,  The  Educative  Process,  chapters  viii,  xiv. 


RELATION    TO   MORALITY   AND   PROGRESS      87 

class  under  ideas ;  *  what  is  of  occasional  recurrence 
upon  suggestion  we  may  class  under  notions  ;  what  is  of 
periodical  but  infrequent  presence  we  may  class  under 
purposes  ;  what  is  of  periodical  and  familiar  presence  we 
may  class  under  affections  ;  while  what  is  perfectly 
assimilated  beyond  consciousness  we  may  class  under 
habits,  and  what  is  habitual  and  affirmative  or  active  we 
may  class  under  motives.  However  we  may  classify,  in 
some  system  of  psychological  terminology  or  nomencla- 
ture, these  ideas,  instincts,  passions,  affections,  pains, 
pleasures,  fears,  desires,  sorrows,  joys,  griefs,  anxieties, 
traits,  habits,  notions,  purposes,  emotions,  prejudices, 
fancies,  thoughts,  motives,  we  know  that  they  make  us 
what  we  are,  both  second  by  second  and  also  by  our  lives. 
They  constitute  our  characteristics ;  to  us,  they  are  rea- 
sons or  as  reasons ;  in  us  as  seen  by  others,  they  are  the 
causes  of  our  actions  by  which  alone  they  know  us  :  in 
the  eyes  of  Him  who  sees  all  of  us,  they  are  ourselves,  — 
our  dispositions,  characters,  souls.2 

In  a  certain  sense,  the  community  has  a  disposition, 
a  character,  a  mind,  a  soul.3  To  other  communities,  it 
appears  to  possess  characteristics  that  cause  its  actions. 
Its  own  citizens  assign  to  these  characteristics  the  dig- 
nified term  of  reasons.  Obviously,  the  community  is  no 
real,  integral  entity,  but  merely  a  convenient  term  by 
which  to  express  consciousness  of  kind,  neighborliness, 

1  This  word  may  be  used  in  three  several  senses  :  (a)  an  image  present 
in  consciousness,  immediately  derived  from  sensation  (that  is,  of  peri- 
pheral origin) ;  (3)  an  image  present  in  consciousness  by  recall  from  pre- 
vious experience  (that  is,  of  central  derivation) ;  and  (c)  a  process,  a 
thought,  a  series.    Cf.  Titchener,  Outlines  of  Psychology,  p.  7. 

2  The  text  here  is  a  mere  analysis  which,  as  Kant  shows,  adds  no 
knowledge.   My  purpose  is  simply  to  express  upon  the  principle  of  Fichte 
a  rethinking  in  self -consciousness  of  the  experience  familiarly  presented 
as  a  complete  whole  in  direct  consciousness  or  as  disjunct  units  in  a  con- 
fused subconsciousness.    Kant,  Transcendental  Analytic,  §  15;  Fichte, 

Wisscnsch  aftsleh  re. 

3  Bosanquet,  Aspects  of  the  Social  Problem,  chapter  xviii. 


88  EDUCATION    AND    SOCIETY 

the  common  interest  and  associated  action  of  individuals. 
Obviously,  therefore,  the  morals  of  a  community  can  be 
changed  only  by  a  change  in  the  morals  of  one  and  an- 
other of  its  individuals. 

The  change  in  the  morals  of  the  individual  must  be  such  as 
seizes  upon  the  imagination  of  the  others  or  comes  with  a 
compelling  conviction  into  their  conscience.  A  city  govern- 
ment may  be  corrupt ;  and  every  one  may  know  or  at  least 
suspect  it.  Meanwhile,  all  tolerate  the  wrongdoing  and  com- 
panion or  ignore  the  wrongdoers.  A  single  protestant  can 
sometimes  destroy  the  whole  "mind"  of  the  community  by 
sounding  the  discordant  note  of  reform  by  word  and  deed. 

Where  factions  exist,  there  the  individual  can  do  but  little. 
In  a  city  of  factions,  there  is  no  characteristic  social  mood. 

Whatever  the  individual  gains  in  life  beyond  his  in- 
heritance must  come  from  the  life  "within  the  veil." 
The  individual  must  draw  from  the  universal.  His  obli- 
gation, therefore,  is  that  of  the  honorable  transmitter  of 
the  gains  in  no  wise  to  be  credited  to  his  own  merit. 
Moreover,  he  who  really  does  serve  as  a  conduit  of 
thought,  who  is  in  any  sense  a  prophet  or  inventor, 
always,  necessarily,  and  inevitably  seeks  to  convey  his 
new  truth  to  his  fellows.  This  is  the  cause  of  all  pro- 
gress, the  origin  of  all  martyrdoms,  the  first  stage  in 
the  process  of  all  human  improvement. 

Education  as  a  formal  system  cannot  and  does  not  try 
to  provide  these  new  ideas  and  ideals  ;  but  whereas  ordi- 
nary society  always,  necessarily,  and  inevitably  resists 
the  new  idea,  puts  it  to  the  proof,  and  usually  rejects  it, 
education  is  ready  to  offer  its  machinery  for  the  propa- 
ganda of  the  idea.  In  this  respect,  education  in  the  form 
of  the  school  and  culture  in  the  form  of  the  university 
are  allies,  but  with  different  motives.  Education  desires 
to  utilize  the  idea  for  the  benefit  of  the  learners,  and 
really  does  give  power  to  get  the  new,  while  culture  tests 
the  new,  and,  when  it  finds  truth,  desires  to  cherish  it  as 


RELATION    TO    MORALITY   AND   PROGRESS      89 

the  heritage  of  the  race.    The  result,  of  course,  is  finally 
the  same,  —  the  good  of  mankind. 

Education  has  two  purposes,  —  the  improvement  of 
the  individual  and  the  maintenance  of  the  community  in 
civilization.  By  nature,  one  individual  among  many  may 
rise  through  an  unusual  relation  of  receptivity  to  the 
universal  life.  By  art,  education  proposes  to  bring  the 
many  others  into  relation  with  the  ideas  of  the  one ;  or, 
taking  the  matter  more  broadly  and  also  more  familiarly, 
education  proposes  two  things,  —  to  bring  forty  or  sev- 
enty or  one  hundred  or  one  thousand  youth  together  so 
that  the  many,  through  books,  arts,  and  teachers,  may 
associate  with  and  learn  from  the  few  of  "  original  gifts ; " 
and  to  bring  to  all  the  youth  selected  truths  of  the  past 
as  discovered  and  assembled  by  the  best. 

But  for  schools,  how  many  would  hear  "  the  best  that  is 
known  and  thought  in  the  world "  ?  But  for  schools,  how 
many  would  know  anything  of  Lincoln,  Emerson,  Carlyle, 
Shakespeare,  Luther,  Plutarch,  Cagsar,  Plato,  even  of  the 
Master  ? 

The  argument,  no  doubt,  involves  acceptance  of  the  pro- 
position that  one  who  cannot  originate  thought  may  yet 
apprehend  it  upon  its  presentation  : 1  in  short,  it  postulates 
educability. 

Civilization  relies  upon  education  to  remedy  the  defi- 
ciencies and  the  defects  of  our  human  nature.  It  requires 
no  argument  to  show  that,  without  a  system  of  education 
able  to  affect  large  portions  of  every  population,  our 
various  cultures  would  soon  disappear  by  the  natural  pro- 
cesses of  death,  which  carries  away  the  cultured,  and  of 
birth,  which  brings  in  the  ignorant.  Let  education  cease, 
and  in  ten  years  the  centre  of  social  gravity  would  move 
from  the  literates  and  the  efficient  to  the  illiterates  and 
the  inefficient ;  in  twenty  years,  social  chaos  will  then 

1  This  is  quantitatively  the  purpose  of  popular  education.  Ward, 
Applied  Sociology,  pp.  229-69,  309. 


90  EDUCATION   AND    SOCIETY 

have  ended  in  savagery.  If  education  should  cease,  the 
entire  structure  of  civilization  —  a  structure  built  up 
through  ten  thousand  years,  obviously  the  human  man- 
ner, the  reflective  disposition  of  man  as  a  soul,  a  disposi- 
tion harmonized  through  forty  thousand  years  —  would 
disappear  in  less  than  a  generation.  Conversely,  educa- 
tion, as  an  informing  and  infilling  process,  builds  up  the 
morality  of  each  new  generation. 

Education,  in  this  sense,  conditions  civilization,  for 
the  essence  of  civilization  is  morality. 

The  importance  of  this  principle  appears  upon  a  con- 
sideration of  the  fundamental  laws  of  population,  which 
are  too  familiar  to  require  more  than  a  summary  here.1 

Average  humanity,  the  humanity  of  muscle,  energy, 
and  emotion,  the  "  plain  people,"  "  real  folks  "  (to  use 
the  terms  of  Lincoln  and  of  Riley),  tend  to  multiply,  as 
a  matter  of  course,  by  a  geometric  progression  that 
characterizes  the  biologic  world.  Normal,  healthy,  san- 
guine humanity,  parent  of  all  optimisms,  full  of  faith  in 
the  Tightness  of  the  universe  of  God,  trusts  the  future 
implicitly  to  the  All-Father.  Its  conscious  life  sets  no 
barrier  to  the  animal  life.  Such  humanity,  bearing  in  its 
heart  the  race,  brings  offspring  into  life  naturally  and 
frequently.  It  weds  early,  almost  carelessly,  and  breeds 
in  each  generation  for  twenty  years.  Six,  ten,  fifteen 
children  may  be  the  issue  of  a  marriage.  Eight  grand- 
parents may  have  one  hundred,  two  hundred  grandchil- 
dren. Most  offspring  are  mediocre  like  their  parents, 
but  there  are  some  variants.  Of  these  variants,  a  few  are 
supernormal ;  most  are  subnormal  or  abnormal.  The  last 
die,  or  their  children  die,  without  issue.  The  superior 
variants  tend  to  form  classes,  some  economic,  some  cul- 
tural, some  political.  These  superior  classes  produce  also 

1  Patten,  Annals  of  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social  Science, 
September,  1905.  Gide,  Principles  of  Political  Economy  (transl.  Veditz), 
pp.  66-9. 


RELATION    TO   MORALITY   AND   PROGRESS     91 

their  variants.  In  every  population,  therefore,  at  any 
given  time,  we  find  the  classes,  relatively  small  in  num- 
bers, but  great  in  authority,  and  the  masses,1  relatively 
large  but  in  subjection  to  the  few.  Above  the  classes, 
issuing  from  them  or  from  the  masses,  towers  an  occa- 
sional genius,  mayhap  so  far  in  the  blue  of  the  future 
that  most  men  cannot  see  his  light.  Between  classes 
and  masses  are  other  variants,  some  from  above  and  some 
from  below.  Lastly,  below  the  masses,  are  the  variants 
of  degeneration.2 

the  variants  at  genius  .  .  .  .001  % 

Classes  —  the  superior 10  % 

the  variants  of  talent  .  .  .  15  % 

Masses  —  the  mediocre 5°  % 

the  inferior        10  % 

the  variants  of  degeneration    .  5  % 

Now  the  classes  do  not  multiply  by  geometrical  pro- 
gression or  by  arithmetical :  they  do  not  multiply  at  all. 
Genius  is  almost  a  childless  stirp.3  Men  and  women  of 
talent,  as  a  class,  produce  fewer  children  than  their  own 
number.  The  variants  from  the  masses  keep  the  classes 
filled.  The  reasons  for  the  infertility  of  the  classes  are 
two ;  they  are  entirely  obvious,  historically  certain,  and 
inevitable.  First,  men  and  women  of  talent  are  by  defi- 
nition and  of  necessity  absorbed  in  the  intellectual  life. 
This  life  is  not  physically  procreative  or  emotionally 
parental.  Talent  is  race-suicidal ;  it  aborts  from  the  main 

1  George,  Progress  and  Poverty  ;  Gumplowicz,  op.  cit.,  p.  1 29. 

*  The  discussion  ignores  what  the  man  of  the  world  cannot  ignore, 
viz.  the  varying  degrees  of  nutrition  of  these  souls  and  bodies.  Super- 
nutrition  (hypernutrition)  afflicts  one  in  a  thousand.  Subnutrition  starves 
many.  Malnutrition  destroys  a  few.  There  is  a  malnutrition  and  there  is 
a  supernutrition  of  the  soul  as  well  as  of  the  body.  Often  environment 
conspires  with  heredity  to  make  or  to  wreck  a  soul.  Gilman,  Human 
Work;  Spargo,  The  Bitter  Cry  of  the  Children,  p.  119. 

3  Within  a  few  generations,  even  when  a  genius  has  children,  his  de- 
scendants disappear.  This  always  happens  when  talent  persists. 


92  EDUCATION    AND   SOCIETY 

stock ;  it  defies  the  physical.  Wherein  lies  the  second 
reason  ?  Men  and  women  of  talent  value  themselves  : 
married,  as  parents,  they  value  their  children.  Knowing 
the  persistent  tendency  of  offspring  to  revert  to  the 
race-types  of  mediocrity,  they  assert  in  thought,  in  act, 
and  in  word  the  preferability  of  quality  to  quantity  in 
children  ;  which  means  simply  that  they  produce  few 
children  and  endeavor  by  education  to  insure  their  ris- 
ing to  the  parental  level.  That  this  education  to  mental 
superiority  still  farther  exhausts  the  physical  vitality  is 
obvious;  for  such  education  burns  the  candle  of  life  fast 
even  though,  by  reason  of  the  poverty  that  usually,  and 
almost  necessarily  in  the  modern  economic  regime,  at- 
tends the  mental  life,  it  does  not  burn  the  candle  at  both 
ends.  -Of  such  education,  insterility  is  the  inevitable 
result. 

As  a  formal  system,  education  has  three  tasks.  First 
of  all,  education  must  help  the  nation  to  maintain  the 
classes.*  To  supply  talent  with  material  for  growth 
(whether  that  talent  be  by  heredity  or  by  variation)  is 
the  chief  duty  of  every  national  system  of  education. 
The  duty  forces  society  to  educate  the  children  of  the 
classes,  especially  such  as  seem  likely  to  become  capable 
of  performing  the  functions  of  the  classes.  This  is  a  dif- 
ficult enterprise,  which  necessitates  preserving  as  far  as 
possible  the  bodily  health  and  efficiency  of  what  is  cer- 
tain to  be,  by  the  second  generation,  a  depleted  stock. 
Even  intermarriage  with  the  men  or  women  of  the 
masses  cannot  wholly  prevent  such  depletion ;  and  it 
always  imperils  the  heritage  of  talent.2 

A  more  difficult  enterprise  for  the  maintenance  of 
the  classes,  and  the  most  important  of  the  tltree  tasks  of 

1  The  doctrine  of  the  text  is  that  there  are  two  genuine  aristocracies, 
—  of  native  talent,  and  of  educated  talent.   The  safety  of  a  particular 
civilization  lies  in  their  harmonious  association. 

2  Woods,  Heredity  in  Royalty,  pp.  283,  292,  298. 


RELATION   TO    MORALITY   AND    PROGRESS      93 

education,  is  to  utilize  completely  those  variants  front  the 
masses  who  seem  capable  of  rising  into  the  classes. 
Upon  the  success  of  this  enterprise  depend  the  mainte- 
nance and  the  progress  of  every  civilization.  The  classes 
may  die  away  at  the  top  without  imperiling  the  nation, 
provided  that  the  clever  and  industrious,  the  socially 
efficient,  the  best  children  of  the  masses,  rise  in  suffi- 
cient numbers  to  fill  the  upper  ranks.  This  is  precisely 
the  hope  of  American  social  democracy,  and  at  the  same 
time  the  peril  of  American  economic  feudalism.1 

The  third  characteristic  task  of  education  is  to  prepare 
the  masses  for  the  routine  work  of  the  world  and  for  ap- 
preciation of  or  submission  to  the  classes.  It  is  useless  to 
disguise  the  fact  that  the  mediocre  man  and  the  medi- 
ocre woman  by  definition  cannot,  and  therefore  do  not, 
know  certain  things ;  as,  for  example,  the  meaning  and 
the  method  of  government,  the  purpose  and  value  of  art 
and  of  literature,  the  relations  of  the  past  and  present, 
and  the  tendency  into  the  future.  I  am  far  from  suppos- 
ing that  any  one,  however  able,  however  experienced, 
however  cultured,  really  understands  very  much  of  the 
larger  or  of  the  higher  life.  Nor  am  I  saying  that  the 
mediocre  individual  is  blind,  dull,  insensitive  to  the  tra- 
gedy and  to  the  comedy  of  common  life ;  but  I  am  seek- 
ing publicly  to  dispel  a  possible  illusion  that  by  some 
manner  of  educational  wonder-working  slight  ability  and 
energy  can  be  converted  into  great  talent. 

There  is  a  familiar  illusion  that  by  election  to  office  in  State 
or  in  Church,  an  individual  must  become  legislator  or  execu- 
tive or  judge  or  trustee  in  fact.  This  illusion  is  due  to  several 
circumstances.  The  individual  may  become  an  associate  of 
perhaps  really  competent  representatives  of  the  particular 
institution,  whose  glory  extends  beyond  themselves  to  him. 
Again,  by  experience  in  office,  he  may  become  competent 
himself.  Lastly,  by  election,  he  appears  to  sum  up  the  social 
1  Ghent,  Our  Benevolent  Feudalism  :  Class  and  Mass,  passim. 


94  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

will,  and  is  thereby  dignified  beyond  individuality  into 
democratic  personality.  By  accident  of  fortunate  choice  that 
conspires  with  experience  to  bring  the  individual  to  wisdom,  in 
a  few  instances  the  elected  mediocrity  by  force  of  education 
in  office  becomes  a  capable  person.  It  is  the  small  number  of 
such  cases  that  justifies  historically  the  interference  of  the 
classes  by  strategy  and  tactics  to  thwart  the  free  choice  of  the 
democracy  and  to  force  the  selection  of  the  competent  who, 
by  present  definition,  belong  to  the  classes. 

Education,  then,  as  a  formal  system  contributes  to 
progress  certain  rescued  individuals,  whose  powers  other- 
wise would  remain  asleep.  It  moulds  the  masses  into 
convenient  social  forms  and  facilitates  the  expression  of 
their  mediocrity,  which  otherwise  is  usually  suppressed 
and  sullen.  It  cultivates  the  classes,  particularly  in  re- 
spect to  their  health  and  strength. 

Besides  these  three  characteristic  tasks,  education  has 
several  other  obligations  to  society.  In  respect  to  the 
natural  genius,  the  obligation  is  first  to  discover  him, 
then  to  renounce  control  over  him,  and,  last,  to  serve 
him.  To  assert  that  the  genius  must  submit  to  the  law 
is  a  paradox  to  be  accepted  only  upon  subtle  and  compli- 
cated definition.1  In  respect  to  the  idiot,  to  the  defective, 
to  the  blind,  the  deaf,  the  crippled,  to  the  incorrigible, 
the  criminal,  the  parasite,  the  weakling,  the  obligation  is 
first  to  diagnose  his  case,  then  to  find,  if  any,  the  remedy, 
and  last,  if  possible,  to  redeem  him.  Only  the  science 
of  the  future,  only  the  hoped-for  philanthropy  of  the 
future,  only  God,  the  mystery,  the  winner  of  human 
hearts,  contains  all  the  solutions  of  these  afflicting,  ab- 
sorbing, insistent  problems. 

Education  as  a  formal  system  has  still  another  obli- 
gation to  society,  and  one  often  subjected  to  bitter 
controversy.  Education  must  evaluate  the  sciences  and 
the  arts,  the  knowledges  and  the  skills,  the  exercises  and 

1  Baldwin,  Mental  Development,  vol.  ii,  p.  160. 


RELATION    TO   MORALITY   AND   PROGRESS     95 

the  disciplines,  the  methods  physical  and  the  methods 
psycliical,  and  must  determine  their  use  in  its  own  enter- 
prises. It  must  prescribe  courses  and  create  texts  and 
lessons.  In  the  performance  of  this  function,  education 
must  endure  at  times  even  ridicule.  Upon  analysis,  the 
obligation  appears  to  be  one  essentially  proper  to  educa- 
tion and  calculated  to  elevate  the  school  in  dignity.  The 
educator  becomes  the  judge  of  history,  its  cultures,  its 
men.  And  this  is  an  eminently  proper  social  function, 
for  the  past  is  valueless  save  as  pedagogy ; *  and  the  dead 
are  worthless  save  as  the  teachers  of  living  men.  Thus 
history  becomes  sacred,  in  that  it  guides  life  ;  and  the 
dead  live  again  in  terrestrial  immortality. 

Wherefore,  it  appears  that  the  best  of  men  should  be 
the  educators  of  the  men-and-women-to-be.  And  we  are 
brought  to  the  conclusion  of  Plato2  that  philosophers 
should  completely  rule  society.  The  political  problem  is 
how  to  get  them  into  office;  the  educational,  how  to 
produce  them. 

The  man  of  the  classes,  according  to  educational 
theory,  or  to  biological  fact,  may  not  be  formally  recog- 
nized as  such  by  any  actual  community  ;  and  yet,  beneath 
the  forms,  he  will  really  be  ruler.  The  old  clothes,  the 
begrimed  overalls,  the  confined  house,  the  petty  income, 
and  the  narrow  living  of  a  common  mechanic  may  con- 
ceal the  inventor  by  whose  ideas  thousands  or  millions 
after  his  day  may  live.  Fine  clothing,  a  solitaire  dia- 
mond, a  brick  mansion,  free  money,  and  generous  hos- 
pitality may  conceal  the  real  clerk  who  obeys  orders  and 
rules  no  one.  And  yet  "the  classes"  and  "the  masses," 
as  these  terms  are  generally  used  in  history  and  in  cur- 
rent speech,  conform  in  most  respects  with  the  real 
classes  and  masses. 

When  education  has  created  the   universal  School ; 

1  Harrison,  Meaning  of  History,  p.  9. 

2  The  Republic. 


96  EDUCATION   AND    SOCIETY 

when  the  child  is  born  into  the  School,  as  to-day  he  is 
born  into  the  universal  State,  and  as  in  earlier  times  he 
was  born  into  the  universal  Church, — when  education 
has  come  into  its  own  as  government  has,  as  religion 
once  more  should  come,  —  the  educator  will  hold  himself 
responsible  for  social  as  well  as  individual  progress,  and 
for  social  as  well  as  individual  morality.  This  will  in- 
volve on  his  part  discerning  the  signs  of  the  times.1  It 
will  lift  him  out  of  particularism,  beyond  socialism,  into 
humanity  and  eternity.  Then  he  will  ask  of  everything 
that  he  does,  —  Will  this  improve  the  race  ?  Will  it 
strengthen  this  boy  or  girl,  this  man  or  woman,  in  im- 
mortality ?  For  humanity  and  immortality  are  insepa- 
rable from  progress  and  morality.  The  good  man  and  a 
fit  race  must  work  both  for  progress  and  for  righteous- 
ness. 

1  Jesus,  Matthew,  Gospel  xvi,  3-6. 


CHAPTER   VI 

THE    FAILURE    OF    EDUCATION 
(a)    SOCIAL  CAUSES.    (6)    PERSONAL  CAUSES 

The  results  of  American  education  hare  fallen  far  short  of  the  hopes  and  expectations 
of  its  founders  and  advocates. 

For  millions  of  our  children  systematic  education  stops  far  too  soon  ;  and  for  millions 
of  adults  the  mode  of  earning  the  livelihood  affords  so  little  mental  training  and  becomes 
so  automatic  that  mental  training  is  seriously  hindered,  if  not  arrested.  —  ELIOT,  More 
Money  for  the  Public  Schools,  pp.  51,  48. 

What  we  desire  a  youth  to  acquire  is  the  power  of  overcoming  difficulties  and  the  corre- 
sponding habit  of  adequate  achievement.  —  H^NUS,  A  Modern  School,  p.  77. 

Whoso  neglects  learning  in  his  youth,  loses  the  past  and  is  dead  to  the  future.  — 
EURIPIDES,  Phrixas  {Fragment,  927). 

EDUCATION  cannot  fail  and  never  does  fail;  but  attempts 
to  educate  often  fail ;  and  communities  and  individuals 
often  fail  to  educate  or  even  to  attempt  to  educate.  To 
say  that  a  man's  education  has  been  a  failure  means  that 
he  has  not  had  an  education.  We  confront  here  un- 
pleasant but  by  no  means  unprofitable  facts.  For  want 
of  proper  personal  and  social  motives  and  values,  pseudo- 
educations  abound. 

Right  social  motives  in  education  may  be  classified 
either  in  respect  to  society  or  in  respect  to  the  indi- 
vidual ;  that  is,  society  through  one  or  other  of  its  sev- 
eral institutions  may  organize  education  with  a  view 
to  what  it  conceives  to  be  its  own  general  interest,  or 
with  a  view  to  what  it  conceives  to  be  the  interest  of 
each  particular  individual  to  be  educated.  In  the  first  in- 
stance, the  motive  of  society  is  to  maintain  itself,  perhaps 
even  to  improve  itself.  Society  may  more  or  less  con- 
sciously, less  or  more  unconsciously,  through  its  present 
universal,  integral,  and  independent  institution,  the  State, 
and  through  its  other  institutions,  intend  to  secure  from 


98  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

each  generation  leaders  and  disciples  fitted  to  carry  on 
the  enterprises  of  civilization.  Indeed,  exactly  this  is 
being  done,  in  China  as  in  America,  in  Australia  as  in 
Argentina,  in  India,  Russia,  Germany,  France,  England, 
and  Japan.  In  the  second  instance,  the  motive  of  society 
is  very  different,  not  antipodal,  not  antagonistic,  but 
belonging  to  a  different  world ;  it  is  a  motive  with  no 
logical  end.1  We  like  to  believe  in  cause  and  effect;  in  a 
series  of  consequential  events ;  in  eye  for  eye,  tooth  for 
tooth  ;  in  nicely  concatenated,  logically  related  facts,  rea- 
sons, and  results,  quantitatively  and  qualitatively  measur- 
able and  measured.  In  education  so  much  history,  in 
life  so  much  patriotism  ;  so  much  civil  government,  so 
much  citizenship ;  so  much  arithmetic,  so  much  finan- 
cial accuracy  and  acumen ;  so  much  literature,  so  much 
authorship  ;  so  much  drawing,  so  much  art ;  in  education 
so  many  lessons  in  morality,  in  life  so  many  virtues ; 
thus  we  calculate,  not  altogether  unsuccessfully. 

The  second  social  motive  in  education,  without  reject- 
ing such  calculations,  utterly  ignores  them  in  theory  and 
in  practice.  It  recognizes  that  the  soul  of  man  is  a  strange 
alembic,  producing  sweet  out  of  bitter,  strength  out  of 
weakness,  joy  out  of  pain,  life  out  of  death,  virtue  out 
of  vice,  miracles  without  limit  or  end.  Because  without 
violence  to  logic  and  to  experience,  it  cannot  set  evil  to 
doing  good,  it  discards  every  kind  of  casuistry.  The 
boy  treated  with  every  kindness,  supplied  with  every 
good  thing  of  life,  may  grow  up  discontented,  selfish,  dic- 
tatorial, evil-minded.  This,  however,  does  not  warrant 
deliberate  education  by  unkindness  and  in  poverty.  Such 
a  consideration  floods  the  memory  of  every  man  and 
woman  of  experience  with  a  tide  of  instances.  We  know 
from  experience  that  poverty  not  reduced  to  destitution 
intensifies  ambition;  but  we  fear  that  its  other  results  may 

1  For  the  distinction  between  motives  per  se  and  motives  as  ends,  see 
Baldwin,  Elements  of  Psychology,  p.  282. 


THE    FAILURE   OF   EDUCATION  99 

make  this  one  good  result  far  too  dear.  The  exhaustless- 
ness  and  exhaustingness  of  these  calculations  are  suffi- 
cient warrant  for  neglecting  them  all ;  but  they  fail  also 
because  their  results  conflict  and  are  therefore  incon- 
clusive. 

As  Art  is  different  from  and  higher  than  work,  as 
Art  is  not  measurable  in  terms  of  work,  so  true  educa- 
tion is  different  from  and  higher  than  social  instruction 
and  cannot  be  measured  in  the  terms  of  preparation  for 
social  service.  They  who  announce  the  philosophy  of 
education  for  ends,  —  efficiency  in  this  or  that,  apprecia- 
tion of  this  or  that,  grace  of  life,  business,  and  success, 
—  must  submit  to  the  challenge  of  promoting  ideas  and 
customs  of  class,  and,  it  might  be  said,  of  caste.  If  so- 
ciety has  the  right  to  educate  a  boy,  a  class,  a  school,  a 
city,  or  a  country  district  for  anything  in  particular,  — 
whether  gardening  or  bookkeeping  or  dressmaking  or 
authorship  or  carpentry  or  officeholding,  —  then  society 
has  the  right  to  make  social  classes,  even  castes,  of 
gardeners,  of  bookkeepers,  of  dressmakers,  of  servants, 
of  officeholders,  of  warriors,  of  lords ;  for  upon  this  sup- 
position society  is  higher  than  the  individual,  and  each 
one  of  us,  each  child  of  ours,  is  but  a  means  to  an  end, 
whatever  end  society  chooses. 

Such  an  opinion  breaks  down  from  several  causes. 
The  educational  process  that  is  expected  to  end  in  as- 
sured habits,  character,  and  intelligence  may  disappear 
in  a  drift  or  maze  entirely  unexpected,  or  it  may  issue  in 
the  very  opposite  from  the  intended.  We  have  three 
typical  instances :  i.  The  son  of  the  carpenter,  trained 
as  a  carpenter,  becomes  a  very  skillful  carpenter.  In  this 
instance,  heredity  and  instruction  find,  as  it  were,  tilled 
and  fertile  soil,  which  bears  fruit  abundantly.  Sometimes, 
the  son  of  the  carpenter,  trained  manually,  manifests  in 
mature  life  astonishing  talents  and  skill  in  mechanical 
construction,  displaying  as  it  were  the  square  or  the  cube 


ioo  EDUCATION    AND    SOCIETY 

of  his  original  powers.  2.  Another  son  of  a  carpenter, 
similarly  trained,  escapes  from  this  particular  manual 
labor  to  achieve  success  or  to  sink  in  a  failure  in  an  un- 
expected but  definite  life,  it  may  be  of  statesmanship,  of 
literature,  of  commercial  affairs,  of  war,  or  of  journalism. 
Maturity  seems  to  be  a  non  sequitur  from  youth.  This 
is  as  though  the  life-current  had  worn  out  certain  areas 
of  the  brain  and  then  had  turned  to  irrigate  new  ground. 
3.  A  third  typical  instance  is  that  of  the  carpenter's 
son,  trained  to  manual  skill,  who  escapes  from  every 
kind  of  physical  labor  to  become  a  dreamer  or  an  idler,  a 
wanton  or  a  criminal.  Here  the  life-current  has  worn  out 
the  familiar  areas  and  broken  away  from  all  courses, 
inexplicably.  Of  these  instances,  the  first  is  the  most 
familiar,  but  the  last  occurs  with  sufficient  frequency  to 
warrant  attention. 

We  may  reverse  the  cases,  and  follow  the  son  of  the  vagrant 
till  he  becomes  the  skillful  mechanic  or  the  broad-minded 
journalist  or  the  strong  manager  of  men.  In  this  instance, 
the  misty  life  of  the  parent  falls  as  morning  dew  upon  the 
child.  It  may,  indeed,  be  an  advantage  that  one's  parents  were 
not  too  intense  and  definite  in  their  thought  and  labor. 

This  entire  matter  may  profitably  be  reviewed  in  the  light 
of  the  Hindoo  caste  system.  In  four  generations,  it  may  be, 
the  efficiency  of  any  stirp  in  a  particular  task  is  worn  to 
shreds.  Man  is  meant  to  be  versatile.  He  whose  sixty-four 
great-great-grandparents  were  each  and  all  weavers  may  look 
upon  weaving  as  his  doom,  and,  as  far  as  he  has  life  at  all, 
dream  of  any  other  life  as  bliss.  To  destroy  a  race,  create 
caste  in  it.  We  of  the  free  democracy  take  too  short  views : 
the  son  of  the  banker  may  be  even  more  proficient  as  a 
banker,  but  in  the  fourth  generation  comes  the  dilettante  or 
the  artist  or  the  philosophical  or  practical  anarchist  or  states- 
man. The  climax  is  in  the  third  generation,  then  "  back  to 
the  soil  "  of  general  culture. 

Society  should  not  educate  for  ends,  because  in  the 
long  series  of  generations  such  education  is  systematic 


THE    FAILURE   OF   EDUCATION  101 

degeneration,  and  in  the  single  generation  is  too  often 
futile  to  warrant  the  effort.  A  second  reason  seems 
equally  valid,  and  may  appeal  even  more  strongly  to 
democratic  souls.  Of  whom  is  the  society  composed 
that  is  to  determine  the  ends  of  education  ?  For  man 
has  not  yet  evolved  any  society,  whether  of  family,  of 
religion,  of  government,  or  of  business,  that  has  been 
without  its  head.  This  head  is  the  executive  of  the  so- 
ciety, and  almost  always  executes  a  personal  will.  Here 
are  ten  boys  of  a  village,  ten  thousand  boys  of  a  city. 
Who  shall  say  for  what  ends  each  boy  is  to  be  edu- 
cated P1  It  will  not  do  to  say,  "Each  boy  himself,"  for 
the  boy  who  desires  to  be  a  railroad  engineer  or  a  sailor 
and  is  immediately  gratified  usually  exhausts  in  a  very 
brief  time  this  particular  will.  Not  always,  of  course ; 
but  the  foregoing  discussion  refutes  this  answer.  Is 
each  parent  to  decide  ?  Or  the  town-meeting  ?  Or  the 
school  principal  ?  Who,  then  ?  Clearly,  no  one  ;  no 
number  or  class  of  men.  Until  he  is  educated,  not  even 
the  youth  himself  should  determine  what  shall  be  his 
life-work. 

Still  another  reason  why  education  for  an  end  or 
towards  ends  is  unwarranted  in  science  or  in  morals 
is  that  such  education  is  seldom  education  at  all,  but 
at  best  mere  instruction.  Why  set  a  boy  with  the  soul 
of  an  engineer  to  the  task  of  becoming  a  Latin  poet  ? 
England  tried  that  for  centuries.  The  boy  sickens  or 
revolts  or  enters  the  treadmill  ;  but  he  is  not  educated 
or  developed  or  enlarged  in  any  way.  On  the  contrary,  he 
is  driven  back  upon  himself,  disintegrated,  discouraged, 
narrowed,  devolved,  at  best  only  trained.  We  should  not 
educate  for  ends,  because  we  cannot.  All  instruction  for 

1  "  In  all  ages  and  among  all  peoples,  men  have  talked  much  of  their 
own  rights  and  of  children's  duties ;  we  are  beginning  to  assert  chil- 
dren's rights  and  men's  duties."  Martin,  "  Child-Labor,"  Proceedings 
National  Educational  Association,  1905,  p.  103. 


102  EDUCATION   AND    SOCIETY 

an  end  is  regimentation  that  reduces  natural  genius, 
talent,  mediocrity,  and  inferiority  alike  into  worse,  and  in 
the  degrees  of  its  extent  and  of  its  success  confines  the 
destiny  of  the  race.  The  outcome  of  this  pseudo-educa- 
tion is  to  compel  the  future  to  repeat,  or  to  try  to  repeat, 
the  past.  All  the  retrogressive  nations  have  been  and  yet 
are  victims  of  education  for  definite  or  concrete  ends.  A 
certain  nobility  of  character,  a  large  intelligence,  and  a 
strong  affection  for  youth  are  required  in  the  parent,  in 
the  community,  and  in  the  nation  when  the  elder  and 
stronger  renounce  their  power  to  direct  towards  ends  the 
instruction  of  the  younger  and  weaker.  Yet  it  is  wisdom 
to  do  this,  for  childhood  is  the  fountain  of  life,  and  vaunt- 
ing maturity  is  already  threatened  by  the  avidity  of  death. 
We  are  never  so  blind  to  what  education  really  is  as 
when  we  boast  that  we  see  it  in  some  definite  prospect 
in  life  for  a  particular  child.  They  who  teach  the  love  of 
all  truth,  of  all  beauty,  and  of  all  duty,  which  are  science, 
art,  and  the  moral  law,  are  the  true  educators.  Like 
sanity  and  health,  these  are  the  only  ends  because  they 
are  also  the  beginnings  of  education,  its  conditions, 
limits,  modes,  its  all-in-all.  We  seek  the  higher  type,  but 
cannot  know  what  it  is.  They  who  seek  constantly  find.1 
But  they  who  say,  "  Let  us  have  more  of  such  as  now 
are,"  shall  not  have  even  these,  for  these  who  are  now 
were  found  by  seekers  after  higher  types,  "stalwart  old 
iconoclasts,"  desiring  a  higher  virtue  than  any  yet  beheld. 
For  yet  another  and  a  final  reason,  —  the  last  and  the 
sufficient  reason,  —  education  for  ends  breaks  down  and 
must  break  down  in  a  free  democracy  in  consequence 
of  the  rapid  changes  of  its  social  structure.  We  cannot 
prepare  for  ends,  for  there  are  no  ends.  Everything  is  in 
process,  is  tentative,  is  a  stage  in  the  journey  toward  a 

1  "  And  you  that  shall  cross  from  shore  to  shore  years  hence,  are  more 
to  me  and  more  in  my  meditations,  than  you  might  suppose." 

Whitman,  Brooklyn  Ferry. 


goal.  He  who  comes  out  of  school  prepared  to  do  some 
particular  thing  finds  that  thing  soon  changed  to  some- 
thing else,  —  changed  in  its  relations  or  in  its  spirit. 
Unless  educated  in  power,  in  ingenuity,  in  character, 
the  man  finds  that  the  world  has  moved  away  from  him- 
self irrevocably;  he  has  lost  his  foothold,  and  can  make 
no  other.  All  educators  know  this,  all  educators  under- 
stand this  now  and  have  always  understood  it ;  and  this 
is  the  evidence,  the  sign  manual  of  their  fitness  to  be 
educators :  to  know  that  education  is  a  thing  in  itself, 
the  creation  of  new  and  better  conditions  of  body  and 
spirit,  and  never  consists  in  things  outside  of  itself.1 

But  the  first  and  most  general  of  the  social  causes  of 
the  failure  to  educate  is  exactly  this,  that  they  who  are 
not  educators,  but  in  respect  to  education  laymen, — 
whether  they  be  clerics  or  clodhoppers,  — believe  in  edu- 
cation for  ends,  as  far  as  and  whenever  they  believe  in 
any  education  at  all,  nominal  or  in  their  own  notion  real. 
In  a  democracy,  all  these  laymen  vote,  and  by  their  votes 
they  control,  directly  or  indirectly,  or  at  least  condition 
and  limit,  the  education  proposed  and  desired  by  profes- 
sional educators,  whom,  therefore,  they  are  very  apt  to 
hold  in  a  fine,  or  perhaps  a  coarse,  scorn.  Whatever  be 
the  mode  by  which  democracy  operates  or  is  operated,  the 
State  is  in  some  degree  master  of  the  School.  Often, 
perhaps  almost  always,  the  State  erects  itself  as  the  chief 
end  of  the  School.  Educators  are  to  prepare  youth  for 
citizenship ;  such  is  the  watchword  and  the  catchword. 
Such  an  end,  noble  as  it  is  when  properly  conceived, 
limits  the  reform  of  government,  and,  still  worse,  limits 
the  growth  of  the  soul.  In  their  present  servitude  to 

1  "  The  educated  man  is  he  who  consciously  and  deliberately  holds  an 
intellectual  ideal  of  what  he  himself  and  other  men  are  capable  of  becom- 
ing, and  who,  in  some  measure,  has  the  knowledge  and  the  skill  to  put 
this  ideal  into  practice ;  he  is  trained  to  cooperate  in  the  purpose  of 
human  progress."  Gore,  Birmingham  Address,  Educational  Review,  June, 
1906.  (Also  School  World,  March,  1906.) 


104  EDUCATION  AND   SOCIETY 

State  or  Church,  educators  are  usually  unable  to  con- 
ceive what  they  would  do  in  freedom.  The  social  order 
needs  the  criticism  and  the  construction  of  the  very  best 
souls  to  be  found  by  education  in  every  generation,  and 
of  as  many  great  souls  as  possible.  These  can  be  secured 
only  by  education  free  from  all  particular  ends. 

A  lesser  social  cause  of  the  failure  to  educate  is  dis- 
belief in  the  reality  or  even  the  possibility  of  education. 
We  talk  of  universal  education  in  America,  meaning 
that  nearly  every  child  goes  to  a  school  until  twelve  or 
thirteen  years  of  age ;  but  when  we  begin  to  think,  we 
realize  that  most  of  the  schooling  is  merely  training,  and 
that  nearly  all  of  it  is  soon  forgotten  in  life,  in  the  world's 
work,  which  begins  for  most  of  us  before  adolescence. 
Since  by  far  the  greater  part  of  our  society  consists  of 
persons  not  educated,  the  social  disbelief  in  the  reality 
of  education  is  easily  accounted  for.  Not  infrequently 
this  disbelief  takes  the  irritating  form  of  attributing  to 
illegitimate  and  even  unmoral  causes  the  success  of 
educated  men.  It  is  indeed  difficult  to  persuade  most 
men  that  the  lawyer  has  risen  to  the  bench,  the  mechanic 
to  the  directorate,  the  teacher  to  the  superintendency, 
without  resort  to  force  or  to  chicanery.  It  is  to  be  re- 
gretted that  most  men  prefer  to  attribute  the  superiority 
of  the  few  to  the  fortune  of  superior  natural  gifts  or  to  the 
resort  to  devious  methods,  to  lawbreaking,  or  to  force. 
It  is  the  exceptional  uneducated  man  who  sees  that 
education,  considered  not  as  mere  knowledge-having, 
but  as  improved  power,  has  given  a  proper  advantage  to 
others  over  himself,  or  that  it  would  have  made  himself 
able  to  render  larger  service  in  the  world.  The  less  can- 
not comprehend  the  greater,  and  seldom  apprehends  it, 
has  any  insight  into  it.1 

1  The  method  that  brings  genius  and  talent  to  fruition  is  the  same 
method  that  develops  in  the  rest  of  mankind  power  to  assimilate  their 
products.  Cf.  Ward,  Applied  Sociology,  pp.  292-93. 


THE    FAILURE   OF  EDUCATION  105 

While  most  persons  have  no  faith  in  the  reality  of 
education,  a  few  of  these  refuse  to  believe  even  in  its 
possibility.  These  few  assert  that  all  talent  is  original, 
active,  and  obvious,  and  that  what  appears  to  be  educa- 
tion is  merely  the  possession  of  knowledge  or  of  skill. 
Such  persons,  when  logical,  demand  of  the  School  that 
it  sift  the  bright  from  the  dull,  the  strong  from  the 
weak,  the  active  from  the  lazy,  and  the  good  from  the 
bad,  reject  all  the  latter,  and  supply  all  the  former  with 
knowledge  and  training  in  skill.  Superiority,  mediocrity, 
inferiority,  is  fate  ;  and  to  superiority  belongs  the  right 
to  control  and  to  enjoy  the  world.  This  notion  afflicts 
the  poor  as  well  as  the  rich ;  and  through  many  ages 
has  caused  the  selection  of  the  bright  boy  to  enter  the 
ministry  or  the  priesthood  while  the  others  drift  into 
drudgery,  war,  or  trade.  We  hear  everywhere  the  piti- 
less challenge,  What  is  the  use  of  trying  to  educate  ? 
Are  not  most  persons  born  to  obey  ?  Classes  and  castes 
are  natural.1  Poetry  is  full  of  the  challenge  and  of  the 
angry  defiance  of  this  challenge.2 

A  fourth  cause  of  the  social  failure  to  engage  scien- 
tifically in  education  is  objection  to  its  results.  This 

1  This,  of  course,  is  the  burden  of  most  poetry  from  Homer  and  Ver- 
gil to  Scott  and  Tennyson.    In  politics,  only  modern  democracy  has  ever 
challenged  the  proposition  that   "  Nature  "  doth  "  complexions  divide 
and   brew."   Dryden,  Oliver  Cromwell.    See  Pearson,  Science  and  the 
State,  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  vol.  32,  p.  x. 

2  E.  g.  Emerson,  Boston  Hymn  :  — 

"  God  said,  I  am  tired  of  kings, 
I  suffer  them  no  more ; 
Up  to  my  ear  the  morning  brings 
The  outrage  of  the  poor. 

"  I  will  have  never  a  noble, 
No  lineage  counted  great ; 
Fishers  and  choppers  and  ploughmen 
Shall  constitute  a  state." 

Cf.  Story,  lo  Victis  ;  Whitman,  Leaves  of  Grass  —  Heroes;  Lowell, 
A  Parable  ;  Burns,  Is  there  for  honest  poverty  ? 


106  EDUCATION    AND    SOCIETY 

cause  is  very  closely  allied  to  a  fifth,  which  is  mere 
avarice.  The  comparatively  few  who  see  that  education 
is  real  may  be  divided  into  two  groups,  —  those  who 
see  that  its  fruits  are  worth  while  and  desirable,  and  those 
who  deny  this.  True  education  assuredly  leads  out  of 
the  world,  the  age,  away  from  its  standards  ;  it  evaluates 
everything  anew.  The  well-educated  man  or  woman  sees, 
as  did  Seneca,  that  a  great  property  is  a  great  servitude  ; 
as  Marcus  Aurelius  did,  that  power  delays  the  progress 
of  the  spirit.  The  moralists  dwell  much  upon  this  aspect 
of  education.  But  to  some  these  new  values  set  upon 
truth,  beauty,  and  goodness  appear  foolish,  especially  fool- 
ish at  the  three  costs.  It  is  perfectly  true,  they  may  per- 
haps admit,  that  education  is  real  and  culture  delightful ; 
but  they  will  not  also  admit  that,  as  compared  with  the 
costs,  education  and  culture  are  worth  while. 

The  first  cost  is  in  money :  public  schooling  at  twenty 
to  fifty  dollars  a  year  in  elementary  grades,  more  in  high 
school  and  in  university,  private  schooling  at  one  hun- 
dred or  one  thousand  dollars  a  year  from  kindergarten 
through  professional  school ;  total,  from  a  thousand  to 
ten  thousand  dollars,  even  more,  and  for  what  ?  To  learn 
that  we  are  to  live  for  truth,  goodness,  and  beauty,  which 
neither  clothe  nor  amuse  us,  but  lay  upon  us  heavy  bur- 
dens. The  second  cost  is  in  time.  While  the  boy  is  grow- 
ing up,  he  spends  two  decades,  a  third  of  life,  in  study ; 
and  he  comes  out  with  not  a  dollar  to  show  for  it  all.  He 
may  not  have  acquired  even  a  profession  or  an  art  by 
which  to  live.  Interim,  most  other  boys  have  made  a  start 
in  business.  But  the  third  cost  runs  usually  throughout 
life.  To  the  average  or  median  man,  he  who  is  well 
educated  lives  a  life  that  appears  to  be  a  life  of  self- 
denial.  This  applies  equally  to  the  well-to-do  educated 
man  and  to  one  who  was  born  poor,  has  continued  to  be 
poor,  and  may  perhaps  prefer  to  be  poor  in  material 
goods.  The  educated  man  takes  life  itself  as  a  school, 


THE    FAILURE   OF   EDUCATION  107 

considers  its  sole  end,  education,  —  that  is,  yet  more  life. 
He  means  to  involve  the  world  in  himself,  not  himself  in 
the  world.  Of  course,  to  the  owner  of  the  park,  palace, 
and  picture-gallery,  this  doctrine  of  the  man  who  prefers 
to  understand  and  to  enjoy  rather  than  to  possess  and 
to  guard  may  appear  to  be,  in  the  phrase  of  ^Esop,  "  sour 
grapes ; "  but  it  will  not  so  appear  to  the  owner  who 
himself  also  is  educated,  for  he  knows  that  his  real  pos- 
session of  park,  palace,  and  pictures  is  his  understanding 
of  them.  When  entirely  educated,  he  presents  them  to 
the  public  that  all  may  see  and  understand  them.  Con- 
sider the  difference  between  the  soul  of  Millais,  who 
painted  pictures,  and  that  of  the  ordinary  millionaire  who 
buys  them  ;  and  answer  which  truly  possesses  the  picture. 
Upon  closer  analysis,  the  denial  of  self  is  rather  upon 
the  part  of  him  who  accumulates  wealth,  and  as  price  of 
product  or  of  service  or  in  endowment  contributes  from 
that  wealth  to  the  scientist,  artist,  or  philosopher  who 
has  preferred  life  to  things. 

As  far  as  the  social  failure  to  educate  proceeds  from 
unwillingness  to  expend  money  and  time,  it  may  be 
quantitatively  measured.  The  cost  of  education  is  very 
small,  indeed,  in  comparison  with  the  cost  of  other  good, 
as  mankind  chooses  to  value  the  good.  The  American 
people  choose  to  measure  the  value  of  such  education  as 
they  are  willing  to  provide  as  one  third  that  of  tobacco 
annually,  one  fifth  that  of  alcoholic  drinks.1  In  educa- 
tional plants,  public  and  private,  we  have  invested  one 
tenth  as  much  as  we  have  in  steam  and  electric  railroad 
transportation.  Statisticians  may  assert  that  there  are 
other  modes  of  education  than  those  provided  by  schools 
and  by  colleges,  and  that  transportation  is  educative ; 
but  we  may  answer,  first,  that  much  that  is  spent  upon 
education  never  accomplishes  or  at  least  does  not  directly 

'Chancellor,  Our  Schools,  pp.  352,  360;  A  Textbook  of  American 
History,  p.  544. 


io8  EDUCATION    AND    SOCIETY 

effect  that  purpose,  and,  second,  that  a  very  great  part 
of  all  other  expenditures  is  directly  anti-educational 
and  degenerative.  The  statistician  then  may  reply : 
we  cannot  evaluate  education  in  the  terms  of  dollars 
and  cents,  and  should  compute  rather  the  number  of 
persons  giving  their  lives  to  educational  work  as  com- 
pared to  the  number  doing  other  things.  The  teachers 
of  America  number  two  thirds  as  many  persons  as  our 
tailors  and  dressmakers,  and  two  thirds  as  many  as 
our  steam  and  electric  railroad  employees.  The  man  who 
spends  as  much  directly  or  indirectly  for  the  educa- 
tion of  a  family  of  four  children  as  upon  tobacco  for 
himself  is  the  average  man  ;  as  many  spend  less  as  spend 
more.1 

But  there  are  not  only  social  causes  of  the  failure  of 
education  :  the  personal  causes  are  as  potent  and  yet 
more  numerous.  Some  of  these  personal  causes  may  be 
classified,  but  others  are  essentially  individual.  Several 
causes  are  personal  only  in  the  immediate  sense,  for, 
traced  remotely  to  their  origins,  these  also  are  social. 
There  are  the  two  great  physical  causes, — lack  of 
proper  food,  clothing,  and  sleep,  so  that  the  body  cannot 
develop  the  surplus  energy  required  for  education  ;  and 
bodies  so  badly  constituted  by  heredity  that  their  condi- 
tion is  not  remediable  in  the  immediate  present.  Poverty 
and  heredity,  separately  or  in  conspiracy,  prevent  many 
and  many  a  child  from  being  educated.  When  the  right 
of  the  child  to  all,  if  need  be,  of  the  surplus  resources 
of  a  particular  society  above  its  actual  total  economic 
cost  of  living  shall  be  established  in  public  opinion  by 
being  understood,  then  the  poverty  of  individuals  and 
of  the  State  will  cease  to  be  an  excuse  for  leaving  the 
child  physically  incapacitated  for  education,  and  poverty 
will  cease  to  be  a  cause  of  individual  failure  to  be  edu- 
cated, and  slowly  the  heredity  of  the  generations  will 

1   U. '.  S.  Census  Statistics,  1900. 


THE   FAILURE   OF   EDUCATION  109 

be  improved  so  that  this,  too,  will  cease  to  be  a  cause.1 
In  that  day,  which  lies  in  the  path  of  the  future,  public 
education  will  no  longer  be  merely  an  important  "de- 
partment "  of  general  or  local  government,  but  will  direct 
what  little  of  government,  in  the  sense  of  governing, 
may  remain  to  do.  The  right  of  the  soul  to  as  large  a 
life  as  possible  without  limiting  the  life  of  any  other  soul 
is  the  paramount  right  in  this  world  and  in  any  and 
every  other ;  and  man  grows  into  that  right  as  certainly 
as  he  grows  at  all.  Time  was  when  society  rotated  upon 
the  axis  of  property.  Time  came  when  society  rotated 
upon  the  axis  of  religion.  Time  proceeded  until  society 
found  its  axis  in  government.  Time  now  is  when  so- 
ciety rotates  upon  the  axis  of  business.  And  time  will 
be  when  society  will  rotate  upon  the  axis  of  education. 
Then  mankind  will  know  what  modern  philosophy  now 
knows,  that  the  Perfect  established  the  imperfect  that 
it  might  grow  into  the  Perfect  again.2  As  Tennyson 
sang,3  — 

"  Our  wills  are  ours,  we  know  not  how ; 
Our  wills  are  ours,  to  make  them  Thine." 

The  universal  process  is  education,  an  idea  incompre- 
hensible to  all  men  five  thousand  years  ago,  but  familiar 
to  more  and  more  thousands  every  year  now,  and  soon 
to  be  the  criterion  of  all  the  living.  Evolution,  as  seen 
by  man,  is  only  informal  education  ;  unquestionably  and 
questionlessly  altogether  formal,  deliberate,  and  inten- 
tional in  the  mind  of  God.4 

The  personal  failure  of  individuals  to  be  educated  has 
other  causes  than  the  physical  as  presented  by  poverty 
and  by  anaemic  or  defective  heredity.  From  mere  excess 

1  George,  Progress  and  Poverty,  chapter  i.     Cf.  Maxwell,  New  York, 
Report  to  Board  of  Education  for  1906. 

2  Weber,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  527. 

3  In  Memoriam. 

4  Cf.  Jesus,  Matthew,  Gospel  v.  18. 


no  EDUCATION   AND   SOCIETY 

of  physical  life,  of  "animal  spirits,"  some  cannot  submit 
to  education.  Were  educators  sufficiently  numerous  to 
reach  all  children  and  youth  early  enough  and  to  keep 
them  ever  in  relation  to  themselves,  such  cases  would 
be  few. 

Some  fail  to  be  educated  because  of  family  or  group 
environment,  from  not  the  general  but  the  particular 
social  conditions.  Every  influence  outside  of  the  school 
maybe  anti-educational.1  It  is  needless  to  specify.  Chil- 
dren with  malicious  fathers,  mothers,  relatives,  compan- 
ions, fall  into  evil  circumstance  at  birth  or  in  the  course 
of  their  lives.  Some  are  born  malicious  or  self-willed  or 
intense  beyond  possible  recall  te  large  intelligence,  to 
industry,  and  to  good  will.2  It  is  merciful  that  these  cases 
are  few ;  but  they  are  indisputable.  Not  the  foundling 
only,  taken  as  an  adopted  son,  but  the  son  himself  of  the 
good  mother  and  father,  cherished  for  twenty  years,  at 
maturity  "turns  out  bad,"  may,  indeed,  always  have  been 
"a  bad  boy."  Of  course,  as  a  matter  of  physiology,  we 
must  believe  that  something  is  wrong  in  the  convolutions 
of  the  brain  or  elsewhere,  and,  as  a  matter  of  theology, 
we  must  always  believe  that  the  real  soul  is  good.  But 
in  point  of  temporal  fact,  what  we  find  is  a  soul  so 
conditioned  physically  that  it  seems  set  against  truth, 
beauty,  and  goodness. 

However,  of  not  even  the  worst  of  these  does  the 
genuine  educator  allow  himself  ever  to  despair.  He  will 
seek  them  even  in  the  penitentiary  and  in  the  brothel 
and  try  to  reform  them  by  education.  The  number  of 

1  Folks,  The  Care  of  Destitute,  Neglected,  and  Delinquent  Children, 
passim  ;  Hunter,  Poverty  ;  Spargo,  The  Bitter  Cry  of  the  Children. 

2  "  Our  passions  are  the  harshest  of  all  tyrants ;  give  way  to  them 
but  a  little,  and  we  shall  be  in  a  state  of  ceaseless  conflict,  unable  to 
breathe  freely  a  moment.     They  betray  and  wring  the   heart;    they 
trample  reason  and  honor  under  foot :  they  never  say,  '  It  is  enough.' " 
Coit,  after  Fe"nelon,  "  Spiritual  Letters  to  Men,"  cxxiii,  in  the  Message  of 
Man. 


THE   FAILURE   OF   EDUCATION  ill 

marvelous  regenerations  constantly  grows.1  Education 
is  nothing  but  religion  enlightened  and  energized,  but 
always  and  essentially  the  religion  of  the  faith  that  all 
are  the  sons  of  God,  and  that  as  long  as  He  lives  even 
the  worst  may  be  redeemed.2 

1  "One  great  thought  breathed  into  a  man  may  regenerate  him."  — 
Channing,  The  Elevation  of  the  Working  Classes,  p.  414.  The  modern 
educational  faith  holds  yet  more  strongly  that  one  good  art  well  learned 
regenerates  with  certainty.  See  Reports^  National  Prison  Association; 
especially  Elmira  Reformatory. 

2  "  The  product  of  the  ages  past, 

Heir  of  the  future,  then,  am  I ; 
So  much  am  I  divine  that  God 
Cannot  afford  to  let  me  die." 

Savage,  My  Birth. 


PART   TWO 
THE  MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

The  true  source  of  the  life  of  science  is  to  be  found  in  its  media- 
tion between  spirit  and  mechanism,  when  it  shows  how  absolutely 
universal  is  the  extent,  and  at  the  same  time  how  completely  sub- 
ordinate the  significance,  of  the  mission  that  mechanism  has  to 
fulfill  in  the  structure  of  the  world.  —  LOTZE,  Microcoxmus  (Ham- 
ilton-Jones translation),  voL  i,  Preface,  p.  xvL 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  PRESENT  SUBORDINATION  AND  DEPENDENCE  OF 
THE  SCHOOL 

The  schools,  in  general,  have  occupied  an  intermediate  position  between  church  and 
state,  responding  always  to  influences  from  both  sides,  but  affected  chiefly  in  earlier 
times  by  ecclesiastical  considerations  and  in  later  times  chiefly  by  considerations  of  a 
political  character ;  and  at  all  times  they  have  been  open  to  more  diffusive  influences, 
economic,  literary,  and  social.  —BROWN,  The  Making  of  our  Middle  Schools,  p.  i. 

The  race  that  gives  its  children  the  most  effective  training  for  life,  sooner  or  later, 
becomes  a  dominant  race.  The  training  of  the  young  to  skill  of  hand,  to  accuracy  of 
vision,  to  high  physical  development,  to  scientific  knowledge,  to  reasoning,  and  to  practi- 
cal patriotism  is  the  best  and  cheapest  defense  of  nations.—  MAXWELL,  "  Education  for 
Efficiency,"  Proceedings  National  Educational  Association,  1905,  p.  60. 

And  as  in  knowledge,  so  it  seemed  to  us  in  life  also  to  be  the  sum  and  substance  of 
wisdom  neither  to  ngglect  what  is  small  nor  to  give  it  out  as  great ;  to  be  enthusiastic 
only  for  that  which  is  great,  but  to  be  faithful  even  in  the  least.  —  LOTZE,  Microcosmus 
(Hamilton-Jones  translation),  vol.  ii,  p.  728. 

NAMES  deceive  and  mislead.  In  elder  times,  a  fever  was 
a  fever.  Now  we  know  that  a  fever  may  be  typhoid  or 
pneumonia  or  enteric  or  something  else.  To  advance  in 
knowledge,  we  must  learn  to  discriminate.  A  college 
may  be  a  business  college  or  a  college  of  pharmacy  or  a 
college  of  the  arts  and  sciences.  Schools  are  of  two 
kinds,  but  of  many  classes.  The  first  kind  of  school  is 
the  school  for  education ;  the  other  kind  is  the  school 
for  training.  Schools  for  education  may  not  be  farther 
classified  or  resolved  into  groups.  But  of  schools  for 
training  there  are  as  many  classes  as  there  are  purposes 
to  which  the  training  may  be  devoted.  By  definition,  the 
school  for  training,  whether  that  training  be  in  bookkeep- 
ing or  in  military  drill,  in  tinsmithing  or  in  navigation,  in 
teaching  or  in  nursing,  is  not  a  true  school,  for  that  is 
dedicated  to  leisure.  Growth  of  the  mind  can  take  place 
only  in  leisure,  for  when  all  the  nervous  life  of  the  body 
is  consumed  by  effort  to  conform  to  external  requirement, 


ii6  THE   MACHINERY    OF   EDUCATION 

no  surplus  remains.  The  surplus  of  vital  energy  is  the 
mother,  the  culture,  the  plasma  of  mental  power.  Persist- 
ence in  nervous  exhaustion  makes  ruin  of  the.  mind. 
And  yet  more  delicately  and  subtly :  Persistence  in  re- 
ceptivity to  suggestions  eats  away  that  originality  which 
is  the  cause  of  mental  growth.  Training  may  be  at  the 
expense  of  ingenuity. 

Training  schools  must  be  ;  but  training  schools  are  not 
within  the  purview  of  education.  We  need  some  new  word 
by  which  to  designate  this  pseudo-school.  Unfortunately, 
college  has  long  been  used  too  honorably  to  permit  without 
protest  its  reduction  now  to  mere  utilitarianism  ;  seminary 
by  root-meaning  has  the  significance  of  school,  which  is  seed- 
sowing,  seed-ground,  growth,  and  therefore  cannot  well  be 
distorted  so  as  to  mean  training  school ;  and  last  is  academy, 
with  many  fine  associations,  but  without  philologic  content. 
I  fear  that  it  must  be  "riding  academy,"  "  teaching  academy," 
"barber's  academy,"  "  military  academy,"  "business  acad- 
emy," when,  if  ever,  we  are  logical. 

The  school  must  never  be  confused  with  the  univer- 
sity, though  it  must  .always  blend  with  it.  The  college 
is  half  school,  half  university  ;  and  like  many  half-breeds, 
is  perhaps  the  better  for  its  mixed  sources.  The  univer- 
sity is  for  culture.  In  the  school,  knowledge  is  imparted 
for  the  sake  of  the  pupil ;  but  in  the  university,  that  the 
knowledge  may  be  preserved  in  the  world.  The  univer- 
sity is  the  shadow  of  the  ancient  temple  thrown  athwart 
the  centuries.  All  sciences  or  knowledges,  all  arts  or 
skills,  useful  for  the  heritage  or  endowment  of  man,  are 
welcome  to  its  sheltering  care.1 

In  the  ancient  Egyptian  world,  the  temple  was  at  once 
a  home  of  the  priests,  a  church  of  the  people,  a  palace  of 

1  The  peculiar  function  of  the  university  in  a  democracy  is  to  "  purify, 
refine,  ennoble,  and  enrich  the  resultant  of  all  the  past  and  then  to 
pass  it  over  to  the  future."  Thwing,  History  of  Higher  Education  in 
America,  p.  447. 


SUBORDINATION   OF   THE   SCHOOL  117 

government,  a  treasury  of  wealth,  a  court  of  law,  a  school  of 
learning,  a  museum  of  art,  a  hospital  of  healing,  an  exchange 
for  goods,  and  a  mausoleum  of  death.  We  call  the  scholars 
who  controlled  the  temples  priests ;  but  they  were  far  more 
than  preachers  and  pastors.1  They  were  also  landowners, 
traders,  rulers,  jurists,  bankers,  teachers,  scientists,  artists, 
architects,  physicians,  and  embalmers.  They  owned  the  na- 
tion, the  land,  and  the  bodies  and  souls  of  the  people.2  The 
temple  survives  to-day  in  the  university.  Though  without 
visible  and  substantial  authority,  the  modern  temple  of  learn- 
ing, of  skill,  and  of  wisdom  is  not  less  powerful  than  the 
ancient. 

The  university,  therefore,  is  the  nursery  of  all  the 
professions  and  of  all  the  arts.  It  is  not  indifferent  to 
educational  values,  but  regards  education  as  of  incidental 
and  minor  importance  compared  with  the  necessity, 
from  its  point  of  view,  of  maintaining  culture  in  man- 
kind, and  with  the  desirability  of  increasing  by  research 
the  sum  of  human  knowledge,  and  by  teaching  and  by 
practice  the  range  and  the  quality  of  human  skill.  The 
university  has  for  its  foci  the  library  and  the  laboratory. 
Its  various  schools  are  training  schools  in  practice  and 
in  substance,  but  not  in  spirit  and  in  atmosphere;  for 
though  their  purpose  is  to  develop  their  students  in  the 
knowledge  of  their  science  and  in  the  technique  of  their 
art,  — the  characteristic  and  typical  purpose  of  all  train- 
ing schools, — this  purpose  is  subordinate  to  the  true 
university  purpose,  which  is  to  maintain  science  and  art 
in  the  world. 

Unfortunate  as  is  our  inability  to  discriminate  by  single 
title  between  the  school,  the  training  school,  and  the 
university  professional  school,  and  unfortunate  as  is  our 
confusion  of  notions  regarding  school,  seminary,  academy, 
and  college,  we  are  even  more  unfortunate  in  our  in- 
ability to  discriminate  clearly  by  single  title  between 

1  Lippert,  Allgemeine  Geschichte  des  Priesterthums. 

2  Maspero,  Egypt  (transl.  by  Sayce),  vol.  i,  chap,  iii;  vol.  ii,  chap.  i. 


ii8  THE    MACHINERY   OF  EDUCATION 

pedagogue,  teacher,  instructor,  educator,  professor,  in- 
vestigator, and  in  our  confusion  of  notions  regarding 
them.  The  term  pedagogue  is  as  entirely  useless  as 
psychogogue  would  be.  Teacher  might  properly  survive 
as  the  generic  term  to  include  all  who  impart  knowledge 
or  train  in  skill,  whether  kindergartners  or  college  presi- 
dents. Educator  should  designate  those-  whose  object 
is  development  of  their  pupils  in  force,  in  skill,  and  in 
self-control.  Professor  should  designate  those  whose 
object  is  inculcation  of  knowledge.  Instructor  should 
designate  the  intermediate  class  of  teachers  whose  ob- 
jects are  equally  knowledge  and  skill.  But  such  discrim- 
inations would  be  entirely  unacceptable  at  present.  The 
heads  of  colleges  and  of  universities  are  seeking  to  take 
to  themselves  the  titles  "educators"  and  "education- 
ists," terms,  of  course,  as  dissimilar  in  content  as  artist 
and  scientist.  The  educator  is  the  accomplished  teacher 
of  boys  and  girls',  while  the  educationist  is  the  student 
and  expositor  of  the  science  or  history  or  philosophy  or 
practice  of  education. 

Not  until  our  notions  are  clear  upon  these  matters, 
irrespective  of  popular  and  even  professional  usage,  are 
we  ready  to  proceed  in  our  inquiry  into  the  nature  of 
education.  Though  the  life  of  man  lies  really  not  in  what 
is,  but  in  what  ought  to  be,  the  education  that  exists,  the 
actual  school,  is  often  mistaken  for  true  education.  It  is, 
of  course,  a  fact  that  the  State,  the  Church,  the  Family, 
and  every  other  social  institution  similarly  suffers.  The 
real  State,  for  example,  is  but  a  torso  of  the  State  that 
ought  to  be  ;  and  to  know  this  is  not  necessarily  to  foresee 
socialism  or  any  other  "ism  "  incarnated  in  the  State. 
It  is  merely  an  evidence  of  intelligent  sanity  to  under- 
stand that  whatever  is  ought  to  be  better  in  time  to 
come.  But  the  School  suffers  from  the  dullness  of  men 
in  ways  that  seem  to  be  exceptionally,  extraordinarily 
unfortunate;  This  may  be  an  illusion  of  nearness  and  of 


SUBORDINATION   OF   THE   SCHOOL  119 

intimacy  and  of  interest ;  but  it  seems  to  require  con- 
sideration. 

Wherever  the  School  exists,  it  is  a  subordinate  and  a 
dependent  social  institution,  in  this  respect  contrasting, 
in  America,  absolutely  with  Property,  Family,  State, 
Church,  Culture,  and  business.  This  subordination  and 
this  dependence  exist  not  merely  in  respect  to  material 
support,  the  means  of  existence,  the  absence  of  right  to 
tax  and  to  own ; *  but  exist  also  in  respect  to  function 
by  reason  of  limitations,  most  of  which  are  illogical,  un- 
scientific, unrighteous,  and  injurious.  The  School  is 
always  subordinate  to  the  institution  upon  which  it  is 
wholly  or  mainly  dependent.  Its  morality,  therefore, 
tends  to  be  that  of  the  slave. 

The  reasons  why  this  has  not  been  more  frequently 
observed  are  two :  first,  most  men  are  enslaved,  unfree, 
traditional,  subservient ; 2  and  therefore  they  fail  to  note 
a  characteristic  like  their  own  ;  and,  second,  the  morality 
of  servitors  is  entirely  acceptable  to  rulers,  and  is,  there- 
fore, not  reprehended.  To  the  masses,  the  School,  what- 
ever it  be,  is  in  spirit  like  themselves  :  to  the  classes,  it 
is  agreeable  because  lacking  resistance. 

A  proposition  so  radical  may  warrant  some  consideration. 
Superior  men  are  born  to  rule.  They  may  be  born  in  the 
class  of  rulers  or  in  the  class  of  the  ruled  :  it  matters  not  : 
they  rule  by  virtue  of  qualities,  exactly  as  inferior  men  serve 
by  virtue  of  qualities.  The  qualities  of  the  ruler  are  his 
morals  ;  the  qualities  of  the  servant  are  his  morals :  but  the 
morals  are  diametrically  opposite.3  Because  he  is  ruler,  the 

1  The  right  in  some  states  of  a  board  of  laymen,  controlling  education, 
to  tax,  is  not  a  right  of  the  School,  but  a  direct  denial  of  that  right.    In 
a  certain  respect,  the  appearance  in  America  about  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century  of  boards  of  education,  consisting  of  laymen,  author- 
ized to  conduct  schools,  was  a  gain,  for  it  showed  and  promoted  the 
interest  and  enthusiasm  of  general  society  in  the  progress  of  education. 

2  Cooley,  Human  Nature  and  the  Social  Order. 

3  Nietzsche  was  not  the  first  to  see  this,  but  he  emphasized  it  and  ex- 
panded it  into  a  system     See  Genealogy  of  Morals,  essay  iii. 


120  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

one  ought  to  be  independent,  self-reliant,  dictatorial,  strict, 
frank,  exacting,  masterful,  that  the  work  of  the  world  may  be 
done  efficiently  ;  because  the  other  is  servant,  he  ought  to  be 
dependent,  humble,  obedient,  silent,  servile,  resentful,  that 
the  work  of  the  world  may  be  done  agreeably.  Give  the  mas- 
ter his  way  too  freely,  and  the  workers  would  perish  from 
overwork  and  underfeeding  in  peace  and  from  wanton  sacrifice 
in  war  •,  give  the  servant  his  way,  and  the  world,  with  its 
wealth  and  its  people,  would  be  wasted  by  indolence  and 
ignorance  in  peace  and  by  malice  in  war.  To  the  master,  the 
masterful  seem  good  and  the  servile  bad ;  to  the  servant,  the 
servile  seem  good  and  the  masterful  evil ;  to  the  philosopher, 
who  knows  only  the  good  and  the  harmful,  the  morals  of  each 
seem  one-sided  and  biased.  To  the  ruling  class,  honor  is  the 
chief  virtue ;  to  the  serving  class,  honesty.  A  lord  will  pay 
his  gambling  debt,  but  cheat  a  tradesman  ;  a  mechanic  will 
pay  his  grocer,  but,  in  distress,  desert  wife  and  children.  A 
gentleman  tells  the  truth ;  a  servant  keeps  the  peace.  In 
America,  there  are  many  in  the  middle  class,  sharing  more 
or  less  in  the  virtues  and,  sad  to  say,  in  the  vices  of  both 
rulers  and  servants.  Philosophers,  •  believers  in  the  whole 
life,  desire  only  the  virtues  of  that  life,  which  are  few  and 
clear, — singleness  of  heart,  zeal  to  know  the  truth,  consid- 
eration for  others,  faith  in  the  constitution  of  the  world  of 
God.  But  these  virtues  are  rational,  and  therefore  remote 
from  many. 

A  particular  feature  of  the  problem  of  Negro  education, 
so  called,1  is  the  attempt  to  reduce  them  all  to  the  servant 
class  with  the  servile  morality,  while,  in  fact,  in  the  city  pop 
ulations  of  the  Negroes,  the  mulattoes,  so  called,  who  are 
really  mestizos,  prevail,  and  in  the  country  populations  the  true 
Negroes,  the  pure  blacks,  who  are  often  descended  from  the 
stocks  of  African  rulers.  Now  the  mestizos  are  but  brothers 
and  cousins  in  saffron  of  the  men  and  women  in  white. 
Formal  education,  forgetting  the  "color  line  within  the  color 

1  There  can  be  no  "  Negro  education "  or  Hebrew  education  or 
American  education  any  more  than  there  can  be  Negro  or  Hebrew  or 
American  truth.  Education  is  whole,  colorless,  ageless,  universal. 


SUBORDINATION    OF   THE   SCHOOL  121 

line  "  and  the  natural  classes  of  all  mankind,  too  generally 
attempts  to  impose  upon  these  mixed  races  habits  of  thought 
and  action  suitable  to  the  serving  class  only.  The  truth  is 
that  the  Negro  desires  and  needs  the  resources  of  the  entire 
encyclopaedia  of  education  in  matter  and  in  method. 

In  this  subordination  and  dependence,  the  School  is 
forced  to  assume  a  position  and  a  character  entirely  con- 
trary to  its  real  nature.  When  education  looks  to  govern- 
ment or  to  religion  or  to  the  arts  for  its  ideals,  its  goal, 
it  contradicts  itself.  Jesus  said,  "  Except  ye  become  as 
little  children,  ye  cannot  enter  the  kingdom  of  heaven."  1 
This  is  a  principle,  not  a  particular  statement  of  tempo- 
rary meaning.  For  its  goal,  education  must  look  into  the 
pure  soul  of  man,  such  a  soul  as  that  of  the  little  child. 
The  truth  will  be  found  not  in  the  social  institutions, 
not  in  the  veteran  souls,  seasoned  by  experience,  immune 
by  infections  resisted  or  endured,  but  in  the  young  souls 
stepping  forth  out  of  the  skies  into  the  world  of  men 
and  things.  To  look  in  the  manner  of  the  child  without 
prejudice  upon  things  as  they  seem  really  to  be  is  more 
nearly  to  find  them  as  they  are  than  falls  to  the  lot  of 
the  adult  man.  The  goal  of  education  is  truth,  delight  in 
truth,  understanding  of  truth,  faith  in  truth.  This  truth 
is  no  matter  of  prescription,  no  truth  that  needs  bul- 
warking by  laws,  by  exhortations,  by  ridicule  and  sneer, 
by  threats,  by  institutions,  by  force  of  any  kind  what- 
soever save  its  own  self,  its  very  nature. 

"  Truth  only  needs  to  be  for  once  spoke  out, 
And  there 's  such  music  in  her,  such  strange  rhythm, 
As  makes  men's  memories  her  joyous  slaves, 
And  clings  around  the  soul,  as  the  sky  clings 
Round  the  mute  earth,  forever  beautiful."2 

All  modern  science  is  but  systematizing,  persisting 

1  If  ye  do  not  turn  about  and  become  as  the  children,  ye  will  never 
(ou  /j.-ft)  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  the  skies.    Matthew  xviii,  3. 

2  Lowell,  A  Glance  behind  the  Curtain. 


122  THE   MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

in,  trusting  such  simple  interrogations  as  are  universally 
characteristic  of  the  child.  The  very  affirmations  of  the 
child  have-  the  validity  and  universality  of  the  highest 
philosophy.  And  why  not  ?  Whence  save  from  revela- 
tion can  come  new  truth  ?  And  what  is  a  child  but  a 
new,  a  last  revelation  ? 

A  little  child,  not  yet  three  years  old,  was  swinging  two- 
pound  dumbbells.  Her  father  asked  her  whether  they  did  not 
tire  her.  Proudly  arching  her  chest,  she  replied,  "  Dod  did 
make  me  tong  (God  did  make  me  strong)."  To  test  her,  the 
next  day  her  mother  asked  her  the  same  question  under  the 
same  circumstances  with  the  same  reply.  This  occurred  in  a 
family  by  no  means  given  to  religious  ceremonies  or  discus- 
sions. Such  certainty  was  beyond  that  of  Kant.  God  and  the 
goodness  of  God  to  man  and  the  gratitude  or  love  due  from 
man  to  God  are  as  much  "  intuitions  "  as  are  time  and  space. 
Whether  they  be  intuitions  or  ideas  slowly  accreted  through 
ages  is  a  matter  of  indifference.  The  Power,  the  Father,  God, 
may  teach  truth  to  man  in  an  instant  or  through  ages :  cer- 
tainty of  this  is  a  condition  of  sanity,  of  intelligence,  of  hu- 
manness,  and  any  uncertainty  is  devolution  of  mind,  insanity, 
animalism.1 

Since  pure  truth,  unprejudiced,  simple,  such  as  is  the 
natural  aspiration  of  the  child,  is  the  goal  of  education, 
what  is  the  utility  of  speculations  or  of  inquiries  regard- 
ing history,  science,  social  institutions  ?  Why  consider 
the  adult  at  all  ?  Why  not  turn  society  upside  down  ; 
and  why  not  let  the  adults  be  organized  in  classes  under 
the  instruction  of  children?  What  a  ridiculous  sugges- 
tion !  Perhaps  so.  But  let  us  consider  for  a  moment 
some  of,  the  evils  that  would  instantly  be  condemned, 
were  young  children  lords  of  the  world.  Consider  palaces, 
prisons,  slums,  murders,  treasons,  plots,  lies  of  intent, 
double  dealing,  avarice.  The  adult  mind,  strong  as  it 
is,  shrinks  from  the  task :  reason  staggers  and  desists. 

1  Pratt,  Psychology  of  Religious  Belief. 


SUBORDINATION    OF   THE   SCHOOL  123 

But  continue.  Whom  would  the  child  select  as  ruler 
of  all?  Him  or  her  let  us  make  ruler  in  imagination. 
The  fond  mother,  indubitably.  And  let  us  forecast  the 
result.  What  a  miracle  of  cleansing  would  be  accom- 
plished !  Would  crimes  be  punished  as  now  ?  Would 
money  be  idol  and  magic  as  now  ? 

Read  literature.  Read  political  philosophy.  Read  so- 
ciology. Far  less  profitable  suggestions  have  been  made 
by  very  serious  men  than  the  suggestion  of  Jesus  that 
we  turn  about  and  become  as  children.  Mayhap,  God 
spoke  in  that  word.  Mayhap,  it  is  the  method  to  make 
love  rather  than  power  or  property  the  alembic  of  life,  — 
of  personal,  of  national,  of  world  life. 

At  any  rate,  whatsoever  be  the  cost,  I  will  not  deny 
it :  I  will  not  explain  it  away  :  I  will  accept  and  use  it. 
I,  the  adult,  the  father,  the  mother,  am  part  and  parcel 
of  humanity,  bridging  from  child  to  child  as  certainly,  as 
humbly,  as  simply  as  once  I,  the  child,  bridged  from 
adult  to  adult.  Nor  do  I,  grown  out  of  the  child,  clearly 
know  what  part  of  me  is  child,  what  part  adult.  The 
child  is,  indeed,  the  father  of  the  man  ;  but  he  is  more, 
he  is  the  essence  of  him,  if  he  be  really  man.  For  the 
very  qualities  that  we  call  "manly"  are  childlike, — 
sincerity,  aspiration,  love  of  truth,  fair  play,  openness, 
loyalty.  All  heroes,  all  saints,  preserved  sacred  the 
child  in  themselves.  Uncalculating  self-sacrifice,  single- 
hearted  goodness ;  the  child  is  incapable  of  intending 
anything  else. 

And  yet,  and  yet!  Life  is  not  for  naught.  Higher 
may  the  man  rise  than  the  child  ;  as  certainly  as  that 
often,  I  fear  usually,  he  sinks  lower.  He  rises  by  being 
obedient  to  the  heavenly  visions  of  the  child  and  by 
observing  certain  of  the  habits  and  tastes  of  the  child. 
The  versatility,  the  many-faceted  activity,  the  sleep,  the 
appetite,  the  very  dislikes  of  the  child,  —  do  they  not 
persevere  in  the  man  of  genius  ?  And  yet  knowledge 


124  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

comes.  To  be  good,  it  is  necessary  to  be  good  for  some- 
thing ;  and  what  shall  that  something  be  ?  The  child 
cannot  know. 

The  career  of  many  a  man  illustrates  the  principle.  It  was 
the  aim  of  Demosthenes  to  become  "  a  good  speaker."  When 
he  became  that,  God  sent  him  something  to  say.  Many  a 
poet  has  first  learned  the  art  of  poesy ;  after  he  had  learned 
his  art,  he  received  his  message.1 

That  the  message  comes  undeniably  as  revelation,  unsug- 
gested,  unhistorical,  may  be  sometimes  an  illusion  ;  but  often 
it  is  really  what  it  seems.  Otherwise,  by  human  knowledge, 
it  becomes  impossible  to  understand  certain  persons,  some 
famous,  some  one's  familiar  neighbors.* 

The  School  belongs  to  the  child  for  the  sake  of  the 
race.  It  belongs  to  the  childlike,  of  whatever  age,  for 
the  sake  of  the  progress  of  the  race  in  culture,  in  wealth, 
in  worth.  The  School,  therefore,  belongs  to  the  truth ; 
and  the  truth  for  the  School  is  the  kind  that  needs 
no  apologists  or  defenders,  no  protectors  or  advocates. 
While  it  is  perfectly  true  that  the  School  prepares  for 
"life,"  and  equally  true  that  "life"  (the  world)  contains 
Church,  State,  Business,  nevertheless  it  is  not  the  pur- 
pose of  the  School  to  prepare  for  the  State  or  for  the 
Church  or  for  Business.  Perhaps  these  institutions  are 
needless  or  even  wrong.  It  is  quite  possible  that  God 
reveals  morality  to  the  child,  and  that  the  sin  of  the 
adult  alone  occasions  the  need  of  religion  ; 3  in  which 
aspect  the  religious  attitude  is  inferior  to  the  moral  in- 
tention. It  is  quite  possible  that  business  is  a  transitory 
degradation  of  the  industrial  arts.  It  is  quite  possible 
that  government  as  such,  as  the  rule  of  the  bad  and  of 

1  For  a  curious  confirmation  of  this  in  ordinary  political  life,  see 
Steffens  (in  McCluris  Magazine^  February,  1906),  "  The  Gentleman  from 
Essex." 

1  Cf.  Clemens  (Mark  Twain),  Joan  of  Arc. 

*  Fichte,  Critique  of  Religion. 


.    SUBORDINATION    OF   THE   SCHOOL  125 

the  weak  by  the  good  and  the  strong,  is  necessary  solely 
because  education  has  not  yet  accomplished  its  perfect 
work.1 

But  perhaps  the  statement  that  the  School  is  wholly 
subordinate  and  dependent  is  challenged. 

Property,  the  oldest  of  all  the  social  institutions,  has 
nearly  succeeded  in  shuffling  off  all  responsibility  for 
the  School.  Here  and  there  a  property  school,  living  by 
endowments,  independent  of  fees,  controlled  absolutely 
by  educators  (with  no  business  men  as  trustees  and, 
therefore,  rulers),  may  survive.  I  know  of  few  such  schools 
in  the  western  world  of  Europe  and  America,  and  none 
of  any  importance. 

The  Family  still  maintains  its  "  select  "  schools,  mostly 
for  girls.  These  are  sometimes  schools  for  small  children, 
or  "finishing  schools"  for  girls.  The  object  of  the 
former  kind  of  school  is  to  relieve  mothers  of  home  care. 
The  object  of  the  latter  kind  is  to  furnish  girls  with 
"  accomplishments,"  by  means  of  which  to  win  desirable 
husbands  and  to  make  attractive  homes.  In  these  latter 
years  a  peculiar  kind  of  school  of  accomplishments  has 
appeared,  —  the  school  for  training  in  domestic  science 
and  art.  A  more  familiar  kind  is  the  "  boarding  school  " 
for  boys  or  for  girls.  Such  schools  are  the  results  of 
parental  interest,  and  are  to  be  credited  to  the  ancient 
tradition  that  parents  must  either  teach  their  children 
themselves  or  provide  teachers  for  them. 

The  management  of  these  "private  schools,"  as  we 
Americans  call  them,  whether  endowed  or  not,  is  always 
in  the  interest  of  the  "patrons  "  representing  the  Family. 
A  school  is  "  unsuccessful,"  and  its  principal  "  does  not 
know  the  business,"  when,  as  very  often  happens,  he 
does  not  make  the  school  attractive  to  son  or  daughter 
and  to  father  or  mother.  The  family  or  private  school,  as  a 

1  Such  appears  to  be  part  of  the  meaning  of  Jefferson  and  others : 
"  The  least  government  is  the  best  government." 


126  THE   MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION     . 

type,  persists  to  this  day.  Most  examples  of  the  type  are 
but  short-lived.  Occasionally,  some  academy  with  a  rela- 
tively large  endowment  lasts  for  generations.  The  pri- 
vate school  by  its  selectness  appeals  to  the  economic  class 
whose  members  are  dependent  upon  the  workers  for 
support,  and  to  the  class  whose  members  have  attained 
culture  superior  in  form  and  in  grace  to  that  of  the 
workers.  The  private  school  discriminates  financially 
against  the  independent  masses.  Even  when  conscien- 
tiously and  honorably  "run,"  not  for  profit  but  as  an 
educational  enterprise,  it  must  always,  by  necessity  of 
character,  aim  to  please  parents  as  a  class,  though  per- 
haps not  as  individuals.  By  common  report,  it  must  be 
pro-Family.  The  Family  School,  therefore,  is  typically 
subordinate  to  parents,  and,  unless  endowed,  is  wholly 
dependent  upon  them.1  Some  of  its  endowments  may  be 
derived  from  pleased  parents. 

The  Church  is  third  in  age  as  a  social  institution,  and 
it  holds  many  a  school  in  its  grasp.  Indeed,  in  one  of  its 
forms,  it  holds  an  entire  system  of  schools  in  its  grasp. 
Moreover,  of  recent  years,  another  form  has  under- 
taken to  establish  a  similar  system  of  schools.  And  the 
Church  now  maintains,  as  it  has  maintained  for  fifty 
centuries  and  more,  training  schools,  "  theological  semi- 
naries," "schools  for  monks,"  "temples,"  affording  pre- 
paration for  the  priesthood,  ministry,  and  ceremonial 
service. 

This  magnificent,  world-wide,  age-old  system  of  the 
Church  is  far  more  philosophical,  sociological,  scientific, 
than  appears.  It  conforms  admirably  with  the  laws  of 
classes,  variants,  and  masses  of  population.  By  this  sys- 
tem, there  is  training  for  clergy  and  for  laity  upon  differ- 
ent lines.  But  for  the  celibacy  of  one  great  priesthood, 
—  a  celibacy  that,  of  course,  wipes  out  the  class  in  every 
generation,  —  the  system  would  almost  certainly  have 

1  Cf.  Adams,  Some  Famous  American  Schools,  Introduction. 


SUBORDINATION   OF   THE   SCHOOL  127 

transformed  the  world.  And  yet,  though  absolutely  pre- 
venting the  scholarly  class  from  becoming  an  hereditary 
caste,  and  wholly  relying  for  that  class  upon  the  variants 
from  the  masses,  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  has  won 
and  maintained  a  primacy  in  many  nations  and  a  power 
throughout  all  Christendom  that  can  be  accounted  for 
only  by  the  efficiency  and  by  the  completeness  of  its 
educational  system.1 

But  this  educational  system  is  a  mere  part  of  the 
entire  Catholic  ecclesiastical  system ;  and  every  day's 
work  in  every  Catholic  school,  whether  local  primary 
or  international  graduate,  is  directed  to  one  end,  —  the 
maintenance  of  Catholic  Christianity.  Schooling  of  such 
kind  we  may  call  education.  Without  doubt,  it  is  educa- 
tion, for  no  boy  could  go  through  all  its  grades  of  school 
and  college  without  enlargement  of  powers.  Ten  thou- 
sand, many  million,  bear  witness  that  Catholic  schooling 
is  more  than  training  and  inculcating,  for  it  is,  in  large 
measure,  developing.  And  yet,  once  more,  it  is  the 
achievement  of  a  school  wholly  subordinate  to  and  de- 
pendent upon  a  church.  Appointments,  compensation  of 
teachers,  fees  of  pupils  (if  any),  rules,  courses  of  study, 
text-books  used,  are  all  determined  not  by  free  educa- 
tors, but  by  priests.  Or  rather  the  bishop,  the  priest,  is 
not  wholly  churchman,  but  is  in  part  schoolman.  In  the 
Catholic  world,  the  school  has  not  yet  completed  its  dif- 
ferentiation within  the  Church  by  separating  from  it  and 
integrating  itself  outside  of  the  Church. 

The  persistence  of  the  Catholic  school  has  at  least 
suggested,  if  not  really  stimulated,  in  America  the  es- 
tablishment of  various  schools  under  the  protection  and 
often  the  patronage  of  other  churches.  The  power  of 
these  ecclesiastical  parochial  and  boarding  schools  is 
limited  only  by  their  contributing  population  and  by  their 

1  O'Gorman,  History  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  the  U.  S., 
pp.  445,  489;  Carroll,  Religious  Forces  of  the  U.  S.,  p.  Ixvi. 


128  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

property.  It  is  poverty,  not  policy,  that  prevents  the 
religious  school  from  being  a  vast  influence  in  America. 
It  is  a  chief  agency  of  particular  clergies  for  religious 
inculcation  and  propaganda.1  Education  is  subordinate, 
incidental,  apparently  accidental. 

Now  comes  Culture,  with  its  splendid  schools, — the 
university,  the  college,  and  the  institute.  In  these 
schools,  as  compared  with  the  schools  of  the  Family  and 
of  the  Church,  the  educators  are  free,  yet  not  wholly  so. 
For  over  the  faculty  is  the  board  of  trustees,  holding  the 
property,  the  purse,  and  the  policy  of  the  institution. 
This  board  of  trustees  is  very,  very  seldom  controlled 
by  educators.  It  is  usually  composed  of  business  men 
(merchants,  manufacturers,  publishers,  bankers),  lawyers, 
ministers,  politicians,  leisure-class  men,  capitalists.  Some- 
times one  who  is  only  an  author,  a  professor,  an  archi- 
tect, a  journalist,  an  engineer,  an  educator,  or  a  scientist, 
breaks  into  the  circle,  but  never  with  any  support ;  and 
never  an  artist,  a  mechanic,  or  a  musician  is  enrolled 
among  them.  Nevertheless,  when  no  particular  class  or 
type  is  in  full  control,  and  when  no  particular  patron, 
donor,  or  philanthropist  determines  the  policy,  such  a 
board  of  trustees  serves  very  well,  being  a  microcosm 
of  the  world  of  men.  Over  the  heterogeneous  board, 
the  educator-president,  if  he  be  not  cleric  disguised  as 
culturist,2  or  the  professors  of  the  faculty  often  have  con- 
siderable influence.  But  a  homogeneous  board,  harmo- 
nious, with  an  established  policy,  especially  when  its 
members  have  any  leisure,  is  likely  to  invade  the  domain 

1  "Church  schools  for  girls  are  a  chief  instrument  of  gaining  and  ex- 
tending church  influence."   Tiffany,  History  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  in  the  U.  S.  of  America,  p.  507. 

2  Educators  do  well  to  consider  carefully  the  policy  of  making  the 
president  of  the  college  or  university  faculty  also  president  of  the  board 
of  trustees.    Upon  the  personality  and  purpose  of  such  a  president  de- 
pends the  question  whether  by  this  twofold  office,  the  faculty  controls 
the  trustees  or  the  trustees  control  the  faculty. 


SUBORDINATION    OF   THE   SCHOOL  129 

of  the  faculty  and  to  alter  opinions,  even  to  enforce 
them,  in  matters  alike  of  substance  and  of  detail. 

It  is  in  appearance  only  that  educators  control  the 
higher  institutions  of  learning.  Indeed,  as  a  matter  of 
sociology,  perhaps  also  of  psychology,  it  is  not  desirable 
that  at  present  they  should  control  them.1  That  control 
properly  belongs,  however,  not  to  Property  and  Business, 
as  it  too  often  does  now,  but  to  Culture,  and  that  not  to 
Culture  narrowly  limited  to  philosophy,  literature,  his- 
tory, and  science,  but  as  including  every  knowledge  and 
skill  of  any  value  to  men.2  Freedom  comes  in  the  con- 
flicts of  men  and  of  ideas. 

What  ?  Should  college  professors  help  make  invest- 
ments, expend  money  for  buildings  and  maintenance,  fix 
and  pay  salaries,  decide  courses  of  study  ?  Of  course, 
they  should.  How  else  can  they  be  men  in  a  world  of 
men  ?  How  else  can  they  be  fitted  themselves  to  fit 
youth  to  enter  the  world  of  men  ?  The  Roman  Catholic 
Church  has  survived  professional  control  of  finances, 
which  is  the  essence  of  control,  nearly  two  thousand 
years.  Let  us  have  complete  integration, — Business  for 
business  men,  Education  for  educators,  Culture  for  men 
of  culture,  Cobbling  for  cobblers. 

But  the  running  of  a  university  is  purely  a  business 
matter !  It  should  not  be.  A  lot  of  scholastic,  absent- 
minded,  dreamy  professors  would  soon  waste  the  funds! 
Who  cares  most  to  preserve  the  funds  ?  Those  who  live 
by  them,  or  those  who  are  merely  set  to  watch  them  ? 
The  pros  and  cons  run  on.  The  tendency  is  clear,  that 
Culture  will  yet  come  into  its  own,  which  is  independence 

1  Cf.   West,  "  The  '  Faculty  '  in  American  Universities,"  Educational 
Review,  June,  1906. 

2  I  raise  the  question  whether  the  trustees  should  not  have  absolute 
financial  control  and  be  all  of  them  men  qf  the  highest  culture.    To 
secure  such  a  board,  alumni  election  of  trustees  with  charter  provision 
as  to  the  eligibility  of  candidates  seems  to  be  progress  in  the  right  direc- 
tion.   Cf.  White,  Autobiography,  vol.  i,  pp.  342,  431. 


130  THE    MACHINERY   OF  EDUCATION 

of  everything  that  is  not-culture.  The  fact  is  clear, 
however,  that  Culture  is  still  in  leading  strings.  Not  less 
true  is  this  of  the  public  or  State  universities.  What- 
ever be  the  mode  by  which  the  democracy  enforces  con- 
trol over  these  institutions,  it  is  still  control  of  Culture 
by  the  will  of  non-cultural  society.1 

The  failure  of  Property,  of  Family,  of  Religion,  and  of 
Culture  to  provide  universal  education  forced  the  con- 
stitutional State,  for  its  own  preservation,  to  take  the 
School  under  its  protection.  By  no  means  clearly  under- 
standing the  nature  or  the  extent  or  the  meaning  of  the 
enterprise,  democratic  government  in  America  under- 
took general  education  in  order  to  prevent  illiteracy, 
inefficiency,  and  immorality  from  ruining  the  society  in 
its  control.  The  modern  State  is  universal :  every  child 
is  born  into  it.  The  State,  therefore,  upon  adopting  the 
School,  decreed  that  it  also  should  be  universal :  every 
child  must  accept  its  privileges.3 

This  modern  State  is  historically  a  peculiar  organization. 
No  other  universal  institution,  such  as  the  Church  once  was 
everywhere  in  Western  Europe,  ever  submitted  to  the  control 
of  the  many,  —  that  is,  of  the  masses.  Only  a  few  Protest- 
ant churches,  of  course,  none  of  them  universal,  are  demo- 
cratic. The  American  State  is  apparently  all  society  organized 
for  government.  The  reality  is  that  it  is  a  transient  majority 
of  adult  males  organized  for  government,  and  usually  so 
organized  by  masterful  natural  or  hereditary  aristocrats  in 
their  own  interest.8 

With  an  amazing  rapidity  that  displayed  the  free 
energy  of  an  age  of  legislatures,  frequently  in  session, 
of  newspapers,  of  telegraph,  telephone,  typewriter,  steam 

1  For  a  discussion  of  the  effect  of  the  famous  Dartmouth  College  case, 
in  which  the  State  was  denied  control  over  an  educational  corporation, 
see  Brown,  Making  of  our  Middle  Schools,  pp.  289-291. 

2  Davidson,  History  of  Education,  p.  265. 

3  Bryce,  American  Commonwealth,  chapter  Ixxiv ;    Wilson,  The  State, 
chapter  xiii. 


SUBORDINATION    OF   THE   SCHOOL  131 

and  electric  railroads,  conveying  men  and  ideas  almost 
fluidly  about  the  country,  the  American  State  created 
the  American  free  public  school.1  Like  a  parasite  at  the 
banquet  of  a  Roman  Senator,  public  education  waits 
eagerly  upon  every  act  and  upon  every  word  of  the 
American  government.  We  may  talk  of  "  more  money 
for  the  public  schools,"  and  we  may  gradually  get  more 
and  more  money  ;  but  all  the  while  the  relation  is  essen- 
tially false.  Substantively,  education  is  a  form,  a  mode  of 
religion ;  but  it  is  in  no  proper  sense  a  form  or  a  mode 
of  government.  Better  the  dependence  of  the  School 
upon  the  Church  than  upon  the  State.  This  is  a  transi- 
tion era  ;  and  submerged  in  it,  we  are  likely  to  mistake  a 
tide  for  an  ocean  current.  Education  as  a  formal,  univer- 
sal system  will  never  return  to  the  Family  or  to  the 
Church  ;  and  it  will  soon  go  free  from  the  State. 

But  what  are  the  symptoms  of  this  subordination  and 
this  dependence  ?  What  are  the  indications  of  finally 
"reaching  majority"  and  going  free?  And  what  are 
some  of  the  disagreeable  complications  in  the  State- 
School  disease  ?  We  hear  much  in  history  of  the  State- 
Church.  What  of  this  State-School  ?  What  revolution  is 
contained  in  the  present  ;  and  when  the  wheel  of  society 
revolves,  will  it  revolve  forward  ? 

The  enormous  majority  of  children  and  youth  who  are 
subject  to  the  State-School  certainly  warrants  special 
consideration  of  these  questions. 

Wherever  the  public  school  of  the  State  exists,  there 
it  is  absolutely  controlled  and  in  every  respect  directed 
by  a  political  board  of  education.2  The  superintendent,  if 
any  there  be,  is  chosen  by  that  board.  Courses  of  study, 
text-books,  rules  and  regulations,  generally  appointments, 

1  For  the  characteristics  of  this  school,  see  Chancellor,  Our  Schools : 
Their  Administration  and  Supervision,  chapter  viii. 

*  Political,  in  distinction  from  cultural,  ecclesiastical,  and  economic. 
We  must  redeem  this  noble  word  from  its  sinister  connotations. 


132  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

transfers,  discharges,  and  always  salaries  of  teachers  are 
determined  by  the  board,  or  by  some  still  higher  legis- 
lative body  acting  as  the  will  of  the  democracy.  Who 
constitute  the  board  ?  Educators  never.  Here  and  there 
some  educator,  retired  or  employed  elsewhere  but  resi- 
dent in  the  municipality,  may  be  a  member  of  the  board  ; 
but  the  control  is  always  in  the  political  members.  In- 
deed, the  educator  must  be  a  political  favorite  in  order 
to  secure  membership. 

So  universal  is  th»  non-professional  character  of  the 
board  of  education  that  the  employed  educators,  as  the 
product  of  their  conditions,  rejoice  in  serving  men  "  who 
know  nothing  about  education."  It  matters  not  whether 
the  members  of  the  board  be  chosen  by  election  at 
large  or  by  wards,  or  by  appointment  of  mayor  or  judge  : 
professional  interest  and  equipment  are  practically  a  bar 
to  office.  Once  upon  the  board,  the  member  becomes 
infected  with  the  tradition  of  all  boards,  that  "Educators 
know  nothing  about  money  affairs."  Immediately  a 
double  relation  is  established.  The  board  members 
arrogate  to  themselves  not  only  legal  control  and  final 
authority,  but  also  omniscience  in  every  financial  matter, 
while  out  of  mere  self-respect  the  educators  sullenly 
retreat  to  their  fortified  schools  and  become  a  conspiracy 
against  the  board  and  against  the  superintendent,  if 
he  is  "  loyal "  to  his  employers.  Moreover,  the  board 
becomes  characterized  by  all  the  traits  of  the  master 
class  and  the  teaching  force  by  all  those  of  the  ser- 
vants, so  that  the  public  is  disturbed  beyond  measure. 
Imagining  that  the  teachers  are  what  they  purport  to 
be,  profess  to  be,  and  by  the  board  itself  are  advertised 
to  be,  —  that  is,  responsible  for  the  education  in  the 
schools, — parents  and  citizens  require  or  try  to  require 
them  to  produce  results  wholly  beyond  their  opportu- 
nities and  resources.1 

1  Chancellor,  Our  Schools,  p.  117. 


SUBORDINATION   OF   THE    SCHOOL  133 

The  end  is  not  yet.  Enough  generations  of  school- 
children have  not  yet  come  into  the  society  of  men,  the 
society  national  and  international,  for  anything  like  final 
testing.  Too  many  of  the  failures  of  the  public  schools 
are  regenerated  by  the  colleges,  or  tinkered  into  shape 
by  parents,  employers,  special  schools,  for  the  real  truth 
to  be  positively  known  by  even  the  enlightened  general 
public.  Despite  every  handicap,  some  public  schools 
are  really  educational  agencies  ;  and  their  product  is 
genuinely  educated.  But  the  fallacy  of  the  system  never- 
theless remains  ;  it  is  undeniable,  and  it  is  undenied  by 
the  truthful.  Where  State  legislatures  by  laws  for  the 
public  schools,  or  where  boards  of  education  by  resolu- 
tions or  tacit  custom,  delegate  large  powers  to  educators, 
there  little  harm  results  from  the  present  transitional 
system  ;  but  such  discriminating  legislators  and  such 
self-renouncing  boards  are  few. 

Read  the  statutes  of  any  State,  read  the  rules  and 
regulations  of  any  municipality  ;  and  the  truth  of  the  au- 
thority of  the  board  as  over  against  the  school  becomes 
at  once  apparent.  And  do  not  deny  the  truth  of  this 
statement  before  reading  these  laws  and  regulations. 

The  influence  of  the  vested  legal  powers  of  the  board  of 
education  upon  members  is  very  instructive.  In  a  certain 
city,  a  young  man  under  twenty-six  years  of  age,  two  of  whose 
sisters  were  teachers  in  the  local  schools,  came  upon  the  board 
of  education,  pledged  to  certain  reforms  and  vowing  to  support 
the  teachers  in  their  rights.  He  was  confronted  at  the  second 
meeting  by  a  petition  from  the  teachers,  requesting  that  per- 
sonal matters  of  incompetence  and  of  unsatisfactory  service 
be  discussed  only  in  executive  session  and  in  the  hearing  of 
the  accused.  His  remark,  "  It  makes  my  blood  boil  to  hear 
the  insolence  of  these  employees,"  told  the  story.  He  added, 
"  Human  nature  is  human  nature ;  and  I  for  one  am  going 
to  use  the  power  granted  by  the  laws.  Let  them  look  out." 

The   subordination  of   the    School   is    shown  in  the 


134  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

finances.  Almost  everywhere,  teachers  are  paid  less  than 
policemen  and  firemen.  Almost  everywhere,  the  school 
department  is  the  last  to  receive  funds.  Almost  every- 
where, the  tendency  is  to  employ  more  and  more  women 
and  fewer  men  so  as  to  save  money  and  to  secure  em- 
ployees who  will  not  "  interfere  in  politics."  In  the  vast 
recent  prosperity  of  America,  the  teachers  have  no  real 
share.  Their  wages  have  not  risen  as  fast  as  the  pur- 
chasing power  of  money  has  decreased.  Schoolhouses 
do  not  improve  generally  in  allowance  of  space  per  child 
and  in  amount  of  investment  per  child.  Commonly, 
the  tendency  is  to  make  the  School  a  mere  subsidiary 
department  of  the  city  or  town  government.  Almost 
everywhere  are  to  be  found  statutory  limitations  of  the 
amounts  per  thousand  dollars  of  taxable  property  or  per 
child  to  be  spent  for  educational  purposes,  though  such 
limitations  are  set  upon  nothing  else  :  as  though  we  were 
in  peril  of  being  too  well  educated.1 

Who  are  the  persons  chosen  for  board  membership  ? 
Characteristically,  young  men,  lawyers  or  physicians  de- 
sirous of  advertising,  or  of  "getting  a  start  in  politics," 
business  men  of  minor  importance,  puppets  of  the  "un- 
seen powers  "  that  rule  our  municipalities.  The  respon- 
sible, successful  men  are  few.  Many  superintendents 
feel  that  they  can  resist  more  effectively  the  clerk  than 
the  millionaire,  and  go  so  far  as  to  advocate  the  policy 
of  appointing  or  electing  inferior  men. 

Though  the  end  is  not  yet,  there  are  signs  of  change. 
Board  membership  is  being  lengthened  in  term,  in  the 
hope  that  long  service  will  develop  wisdom  and  prove  to 
be  a  kind  of  education  for  educational  control.  Boards 
are  being  given,  here  and  there,  separate  taxing  powers 
in  independence  of  city  councils.2  Their  ancient  right  of 

1  The  proposed  Constitution  of  the  State  of  Oklahoma  is  only  the  latest 
striking  example  of  the  public  distrust  of  education  as  worth  all  it  costs. 

2  Cf.  Colorado  and  New  Jersey. 


SUBORDINATION    OF   THE   SCHOOL  135 

holding  buildings  and  lands  in  fee  is  in  process  of  re- 
storation. Elections  are  held  for  board  membership  upon 
nominations  by  petition  and  on  days  other  than  those 
set  apart  for  the  partisan  political  elections.1  In  a  few 
instances,  salaries  are  paid  for  services.  In  not  a  few 
instances,  boards  are  employing  business  managers  and 
school  architects,  thus  acknowledging  ignorance  of  edu- 
cational construction.  They  are  delegating  many  of  their 
powers,  such  as  choosing  teachers  and  books,  to  profes- 
sional men.  All  these  measures  are  remedies  for  a 
disease  ;  but  they  do  not  prevent  the  disease.  The  State- 
School  is  merely  a  transitory  type. 

We  have,  therefore,  the  school  that  prepares  girls  for 
society  and  for  marriage ;  the  school  that  teaches  the 
masses  to  worship  and  the  variants  to  conduct  worship; 
the  school  that  inculcates  certain  kinds  of  knowledge  ; 
and  the  school  that  is  supposed  to  prepare  for  citizen- 
ship. This  last,  much  lauded,  common  school  of  com- 
pulsory education  has  adopted  the  principle  of  Jesuit 
Catholic  instruction,  —  Give  us  the  child  till  twelve  ;  we 
can  determine  him  for  life  by  that  time.2  To  the  State- 
School,  all  the  meaning  of  adolescence  is  lost.  Whereas, 
in  fact,  for  boys  the  most  important  year  for  education 
is  fourteen  and  for  girls  thirteen,  the  State-School  allows 
its  education  to  end  there  for  the  great  majority.3 

Business  and  Culture  both  discovered  the  lack.  Cul- 
ture devised  the  old  academy  and  the  new  high  school 
for  the  supernormal  variants  from  the  masses.  Business 
devised  the  commercial  school  or  college.  Its  cry  is 
"  Education  for  practical  life,"  meaning  the  life  of  the 
clerk  or  salesman  or  bookkeeper.  Over  the  business 

1  Notably  in  the  State  of  Colorado  and  in  the  city  of  St.  Louis. 

*  See  the  statutes  of  every  State  enforcing  compulsory  education.   A 
table  is  given  in  Dexter,  History  of  Education  in  the  U.  S.,  Appendix  I. 
See  also  Hughes,  The  Making  of  Citizens,  pp.  134-136. 

*  Only  i  in  17  of  persons  in  school  and  college  in  America  in  1904 
was  over  fourteen  yecxrs  of  age. 


136  THE   MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

school,  Business  presides  mercilessly,  and  dictates  pure 
training  for  the  prescribed  ends.  Business  is  now 
reaching  out  to  dictate  courses  and  methods  to  the 
State  high  schools.  It  develops  strong  arguments  for 
secondary  (early  adolescent  age)  schools  of  commerce. 
Its  theory  is  not  "  man  for  the  State,"  not  "  man  for  the 
Church,"  but  "  man  for  Business."  Thus,  a  department 
of  Society  arrogates  to  itself  more  than  Society  has  ever 
claimed,  —  to  subordinate  the  immortal  soul  to  material 
wealth. 

And  why  not  ?  Why  is  it  not  best  for  the  boy  or  girl  to 
go  to  school  and  to  acquire  there  a  skill,  or  better,  an  art * 
whereby  to  support  his  or  her  physical  life  ?  Is  not  the 
economic  activity  the  essence  of  humanity?  Must  we  not 
first  have  food,  shelter,  clothes,  work-for-wages  ?  Jesus 
did  not  think  so ; 2  but  the  Master  lived  in  the  first  cen- 
tury, in  a  land  halfway  around  the  world  from  us.  His  is 
"  hard  doctrine."  Nevertheless,  it  seems  to  be  wise  as 
well  as  righteous,  for  the  masters  of  business  do  not 
come  from  business  schools.  It  is  more  important  to 
educate  than  to  train.  Besides  all  this,  it  appears  that 
Business  itself  is  on  trial.3  The  economic  regime,  that 
came  in  but  two  or  three  hundred  years  ago,  new-founded 
upon  the  factories  of  the  nineteenth  century,  is  on  trial.4 
It  may  be  that  its  prescriptions  of  rent,  interest,  taxes, 
profits,  and  insurance,  which  now  worry  so  many  stu- 
dents of  arithmetic  and  practitioners  of  bookkeeping, 
will  be  as  obsolete  two  or  three  hundred  years  hence  as 

1  Plato  in  the  Gorgias,  §  45,  tells  us  how  to  distinguish  a  skill  from  an 
art.  Art  has  knowledge  of  the  things  that  it  employs,  what  they  sever- 
ally are  in  their  nature,  and  can  tell  the  use  of  each.  To  teach  a  skill  is 
merely  to  train,  but  to  teach  an  art  is  to  educate. 

J  "  Seek  ye  first  the  kingdom  [of  God]  and  His  righteousness  [justice], 
and  all  these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you  [set  at  your  side]."  Mat- 
thew vi,  33.  "  Man  shall  not  live  by  bread  alone."  Matthew  iv,  4. 

3  Ripley,  Trusts,  Pools,  and  Corporations. 

4  Toynbee,  The  Industrial  Revolution. 


SUBORDINATION    OF   THE   SCHOOL  137 

feudal  dues  (fines  of  alienation,  worships,  reliefs)  are  now. 
It  is  not  well  to  be  too  serious  about  typewriting :  some 
day  it  may  be  as  obsolete  as  hieroglyphics  are  now  :  and 
as  useless. 

Only  thought  lives.    Only  the  soul  is  worth  anxiety. 

Upon  this  analysis,  which  fails  to  discover  a  single 
system  of  schools  whose  sole  purpose  is  the  true  purpose 
of  education,  it  becomes  obvious  why  the  real  school  is 
so  far  from  ideal. 

The  desiderata  of  the  ideal  school  are  two  :  — 

The  independence  of  a  sufficient  group  of  educators 
from  all  external  control  (save,  of  course,  public  opinion) ; 

Adequate  grounds,  buildings,  apparatus,  salaries,  and 
other  means  of  physical  support. 

In  other  terms,  freedom  from  authority,  and  authority 
in  this  freedom. 

The  social  forces  that  should  and  will  produce  a  formal 
system  of  education  competent  to  perform  its  obligations 
are  five :  — 

The  police  protection  of  society,  for  without  the  school 
civilization  would  soon  go  to  wreck ; 

The  desirability  of  material  progress  whose  benefits 
may  be  so  widely  diffused  that  incurable  moral  delin- 
quency shall  be  the  sole  cause  of  poverty ; 

The  neighborliness  of  humanity,  seeking  that  all  per- 
sons may  be  fit  for  companionship; 

The  love  of  children  and  of  youth,  which  means  to 
help  them  to  realize  as  much  as  possible  of  the  good  of 
life;  and 

The  spirit  of  modern  scholarship,  which  desires  all  men 
to  share  in  the  heritage  of  human  knowledge  and  skill. 

These  forces  conspire  with  the  yearning  of  youth  itself 
to  grow,  —  a  yearning  that  imprisons  millions  for  hours 
a  day  in  conditions  often  irksome  and  sometimes  pain- 
ful,—  to  bring  American  society  to  the  independent, 
properly  supported  School. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

THE    NEW    EDUCATION 
(a)   ITS   SCIENTIFIC   BASIS.    (6)    ITS   PURPOSES 

Opinion  in  good  men  is  but  knowledge  in  the  making.  —  MILTON,  Prose  Works, 
vol.  ii,  p.  92. 

The  experimental  method,  qualitative  and  quantitative,  is  adequate  to  the  whole  struc- 
ture of  mind.  —  TITCHENBR,  Experimental  Psychology,  Instructor's  Manual,  p.  bcvii. 

The  aim  of  education  is  world-building,  —  the  construction  of  such  a  world  as  shall 
furnish  the  man  with  motives  to  live  an  enlightened,  kindly,  helpful,  and  noble  social  life 
of  continuous  progress.  —  DAVIDSON,  History  of  Education,  p.  257. 

Every  intelligent  man  guides  his  life  and  risks  his  fortune  upon  the  belief  that  the  order 
of  Nature  is  constant  and  that  the  chain  of  natural  causation  is  never  broken.  —  HUXLBV, 
On  Evolution,  p.  2. 

FROM  ancient  Chaldea  to  modern  America,  the  tale  of 
progress  is  the  tale  of  adding  and  separating,  of  approv- 
ing and  discarding,  the  tale  of  change.  Progress  in  edu- 
cation has  been  a  tale  of  the  new  becoming  the  old,  and 
of  the  old  giving  place  to  the  new.  In  a  sense,  progress 
is  mechanical.  We  may  count  its  steps,  concatenate 
them,  mark  the  resting-places,  measure  the  speed  and 
the  space  of  each  march.  But  though  the  mechanism  be 
perfectly  clear,  the  spirit  may  still  be  hidden.1 

No  one  has  yet  written  the  history  of  the  methodology,  the 
practice,  the  mechanism  of  education  through  the  centuries, 
though  many  have  written  the  history  of  educational  theories 
with  more  or  less  comment  upon  methods  and  actual  practice. 
Such  a  history  of  educational  mechanics  would  be  profitable 
as  affording  tests  of  modern  schooling.  Nevertheless,  the  su- 
perior interest  in  theory  has  its  entire  justification,  for  "the 
letter  killeth,  but  the  spirit  giveth  life." a 

1  Structure,  process,  method,  —  each  is  mechanical,  inevitably  mechani- 
cal ;  but  reason,  cause,  spirit,  —  each  is  vital.  Cf.  Lotze,  Aficrocosmus,  p.  51. 
J  Paul,  2  Corinthians  iii,  6. 


THE   NEW   EDUCATION  139 

Every  change  in  mechanism  is  due  to  some  change  in 
the  life  that  is  before  or  within  the  mechanism.1  Things 
are  the  products,  the  forms  of  thoughts.  Laws,  pro- 
cesses, plans  are  thoughts.  It  cannot  be  proven  by  any 
of  the  efforts  of  philosophy  or  of  science  that  things  are 
not  thoughts ;  and  that  mechanism  itself  is  not  a  mode 
of  spirit.  All  that  we  know  is  that  things  and  thoughts 
are  at  least  not  incongruent  and  exclusive,  for  if  they 
were,  mind  could  never  apprehend  matter.2 

The  progress  in  thought  has  forced  the  progress  in 
mechanism.  Every  change  in  thought  is  accompanied  by, 
perhaps  inevitably  causes,  a  change  in  mechanism,  —  on 
the  principle,  it  may  be,  of  the  "  conservation  of  energy." 
The  movements  of  population,  its  growths,  its  collisions, 
its  combinations  and  wars  ;  the  movements  of  ideas  by 
the  migrations  of  men  and  of  books  and  by  reports  of 
speech  ;  the  movements  of  wealth  by  invention,  by  com- 
merce, by  fire  and  pillage  ;  the  movements  of  thought  and 
of  art  expressing  thought  (in  a  phrase,  the  mechanical 
process  of  society,  which,  in  appearance  at  least,  is  pro- 
gress) :  these  have  forced  changes  in  the  mechanism  of 
education,  which  expresses  the  social  spirit.  This  spirit  of 
society,  the  time-spirit,  has  typical  purposes  in  education, 
which  necessarily  characterize  the  school  of  the  time. 

The  schools  of  a  particular  age  and  country  are  seldom 
much  better  or  worse  than  the  generally  prevailing  culture. 
And  the  typical  purpose  of  education  is  usually  the  typical  pur- 
pose of  the  sovereign  power  in  the  society,  which,  of  course, 
always  resides  in  some  ruling  class  or  classes. 

The  temper  of  the  present  age  in  America  is  demo- 
cratic, scientific,  practical,  mechanical,  materialistic.3  It 

1  Function  makes  structure.  Cf.  Morgan,  Habits  and  Instincts  ;  Sonde- 
man,  Problems  of  Biology  ;  Darwin,  Origin  of  Species. 

1  Hoffding,  The  Problem  of  Philosophy,  translated  by  Fisher,  intro- 
duction by  James.  Strong,  Why  the  Mind  has  a  Body,  passim. 

8  Lloyd,  "  History  and  Materialism,"  Amer.  Hist.  Kev.,  July,  1905. 


140  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

is,  therefore,  out  of  harmony  with  the  characteristic 
temper  of  historical  education,  which  is  aristocratic,  un- 
scientific, impractical,  religious  in  a  formal  sense,  and 
imperfectly  organic.  There  is  not  antithesis  or  antago- 
nism, for  there  are  not  mere  points  of  common  interest, 
but  actual  overlappings  with  resultant  common  grounds. 
Education  has  always  been,  in  no  small  measure,  formal 
and  mechanical,  the  formalisms  and  mechanisms  inter- 
fering, not  slightly,  with  its  essentially  organic,  vital, 
spiritual  nature.  The  modern  American  social  temper 
is,  therefore,  to  be  considered  more  out  of  harmony  with 
true  education  than  with  historical  education.  And  yet 
it  may  well  be  that  education  is  to  gain  greatly  from  cer- 
tain qualities  of  our  age  :  its  will  to  freedom,  if  not  also 
to  equality,  of  opportunity,  its  scientific  devotion,  and 
its  practical  character.  These  will  lead,  undoubtedly  are 
leading,  to  far  greater  diffusion  of  knowledge,  to  perfec- 
tion of  the  mechanism  of  education,  and  to  its  reality 
as  a  force  and  a  life. 

The  effort  of  modern  education  to  diffuse  knowledge 
more  widely  is  thoroughly  scientific  in  its  results,  if  not 
in  its  methods.  The  diffusion  of  knowledge  tends  to  ac- 
complish two  ends  that  may  be  termed  mechanical :  to 
discover  the  variants  among  the  masses  and  to  equip 
them  for  lives  of  peculiar  power  and  of  large  service ; 
and  to  teach  to  the  masses  the  ways  of  culture  and  to 
orientate  them  in  the  world  of  social  right  and  wrong. 
This  democratization  of  education  is  wholly  good  as  well 
as  scientific  and  practical. 

The  perfecting  of  the  mechanism  of  education  is  also 
a  thoroughly  scientific  enterprise.  The  workman  is  known 
by  his  tools,  his  methods,  his  skill :  these  prove  his  craft 
not  less  certainly  than  do  his  products.  The  selected 
teacher,  the  free  and  wide  curriculum,  the  better  book, 
the  closer  organization,  the  more  complete  equipment, 
the  larger  and  finer  building,  the  careful  ventilation  and 


THE    NEW   EDUCATION  141 

sanitation,  the  ample  grounds;  —  all  these  testify  to  the 
art  of  the  educational  director.  The  very  system  is  evi- 
dence, though  not  proof,  of  a  science  within  its  substance 
and  determining  its  form. 

Is,  then,  education  an  art  or  a  science  ?  Socrates,  as 
represented  by  Plato,  considered  teaching  at  least  an  art : 
and  teaching  is  half  of  education.  Modern  philosophy 
accounts  educating  an  art,  but  education  a  science.  It  is 
a  subtle  distinction.  Art  is  an  efficient  mode  or  method 
of  action  resulting  in  a  product  of  beauty.1  And  beauty 
is  a  quality  that  whenever  present  pleases  all  of  us.2  A 
science  is  a  body,  a  whole,  of  systematized  knowledge, 
composed  upon  understood  principles  that  correlate 
clearly  known  facts ;  while  science  is  a  mode  or  method 
of  arriving  at  fact  with  certainty,  that  is,  of  finding 
truth.  Art  also  has  its  concrete  meaning,  for  an  art  is  a 
body,  a  whole,  of  products  of  a  particular  kind  of  beauty. 

Pottery  is  an  art,  often  styled  ceramics.  The  making  of 
pottery  is  an  art.  The  mode  and  the  product  of  beauty  may 
be  considered  art.  Similarly,  the  body  of  chemistry  consti- 
tutes a  science,  while  chemistry  as  a  mode  of  investigating 
Nature  is  a  science.  Both  art  and  science  may  be  used  in 
either  a  kinetic  or  a  static  sense. 

As  a  formal  system,  education  is  on  the  way  to  be- 
coming a  science,  while  as  a  technical  method  educating 
(or  to  speak  more  loosely  in  the  common  fashion,  edu- 
cation) is  an  applied  science  on  the  way  to  becoming 
an  art.  Now  the  art  of  education  is  pedagogy  (or  peda- 
gogics), which  is  not  the  subject  of  the  present  inquiry.3 

1  To  get  the  full  meaning  of  this  word,  we  must  realize  its  history. 
Beauty  is  goodness.    {Beau,  bonus,  belhts.)    A  thing  of  beauty  is  good 
for  us.    This  explains  the  apparent  contradiction  in  the  beautiful  work 
of  art  that  produces  in  us  grief  or  fear  or  hate  ;  it  is  beautiful  provided 
that  in  the  circumstances  grief  or  fear  or  hate  is  good  for  us  or  in  us. 

2  Kant,  Critique  of  Judgment. 

3  This  subject  is  the  science  of  education,  or,  to  express  the  matter 


142  THE   MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

The  artist-educator  may  be  said  to  teach  well ;  the  scien- 
tist-educator, to  teach  wisely.  In  the  one  case,  we  emphasize 
the  good  result  or  the  prospect  of  it ;  in  the  other,  the 
method  and  the  intelligence  shown  in  the  processes  employed 
by  the  method. 

The  science  of  education  must  be  based  upon  other 
sciences,  such  as  psychology,  particularly  the  psychology 
of  the  feelings;  genetic  psychology;  biogenetic  psycho- 
logy ;  physiology  and  physiological  psychology  ;  anthro- 
pology ;  pathology  ;  biology  ;  sociology  ;  criminology, 
far  better  to  be  sty  led  sinology  ;  '  and  political  economy. 

The  essence  of  the  whole  matter  is  biology,  the  science 
of  life,  which  reveals  the  origins  of  the  animal  body  and 
of  its  various  structures  and  functions.  Thereby,  man  is 
interpreted  to  himself  as  a  form  of  Nature,  a  form  liter- 
ally akin  to  that  of  every  other  living  creature.  He  who 
is  not  something  of  a  biologist  can  never  again  be  any- 
thing of  a  philosopher.2  Who  can  measure  how  much  his 
primitive  biology  helped  to  make  Aristotle  "  The  Phi- 
losopher," holding  primacy  for  a  thousand  years  ?  * 

The  whole  matter  of  education,  again,  is  ensphered  in 
sociology,  which  accounts  for  the  humanness  of  the  mind 
of  modern  man.  By  becoming  a  socius,  the  homo  be- 
comes  a  vir.  Out  of  the  individual,  companionship  makes 
the  person.  Not  for  the  sake  of  society,  but  for  the  sake 
of  the  boy  and  the  girl,  are  they  prepared  for  society. 

Yet  the  centre  and  the  envelope  do  not  complete  the 
sphere,  which  finds  its  substance  in  psychology,  the 
science  of  the  soul.  This  science,  for  man  the  most 

more  fully,  the  motives  and  other  forces  that  tend  to  the  making  of 
such  a  science,  together  with  the  materials  that  are  being  accumulated 
for  the  use  of  the  science. 

1  Schmidt,  Ethik  der  Alien  Griechen. 

1  This  was  settled  by  Darwin,  and  has  been  expounded  by  Huxley, 
Spencer,  Tyndall,  Wallace,  Fiske,  De  Vries,  Drummond,  and  a  hundred 
others. 

*  Turner,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  224  et  passim  . 


THE    NEW    EDUCATION  143 

significant  of  all  sciences,  has  many  fields  of  inquiry. 
The  science  of  human  nature  must  sound  and  map  the 
innermost  deeps  as  well  as  measure  the  surfaces  and 
edges.  It  must  begin,  therefore,  with  motives.1 

Every  motive  has  a  reason  2  because  of  which  it  exists ; 
the  persistence  of  the  reason  in  unconsciousness  pro- 
duces its  evolution  into  motive  and  characterizes  it  as 
such.  The  cause  of  this  persistence  is  an  appreciative 
condition  of  that  unconsciousness,  —  its  apperceptive 
appropriateness,  we  may  perhaps  say,  by  analogy  with 
the  processes  of  consciousness.  The  reason  within  the 
motive  is  always  an  ideal.  Every  motive  has  also  always 
a  judgment  regarding  the  ideal  ;  this  judgment  is  its 
valuation  of  the  ideal ;  and  the  integrity  of  the  motive  is 
always  conditioned  by  this  judgment.  The  force  of  the 
motive  is  conditioned  by  its  adjustment  to  the  general 
nature  of  the  personal  soul  and  by  the  force  of  that  soul. 
Motive  is  in  the  depths  of  the  man  ;  no  man  ever  has 
a  motive  false  to  his  real  self,  though  it  may  be  false  to 
the  self  that  he  hopes  to  build.3 

While  every  motive  has  an  ideal  within  itself  and  a 
value  for  its  ideal,  not  every  ideal  has  a  judgment  of 
value  as  yet  attached,  and  not  every  value  awakens  mo- 
tive. Ideals  are  upon  the  periphery  of  unconsciousness, 
motive  is  at  its  centre,  value  relates  centre  to  circumfer- 
ence ;  and  the  whole  constitutes  the  entire  circle  of  un- 
consciousness. It  may  seem,  at  first,  a  contradiction  in 

1  "The  substitution  of  the  will  as  the  world-principle  instead  of  the 
reason  has  been  of  distinct  service  to  us  in  the  interpretation  of  expe- 
rience." Caldwell,  Schopenhauer's  System  in  its  Philosophical  Significance, 
p.  8. 

2  Reason  is  unconscious ;  its  result,   a  judgment,  is  conscious ;   its 
statement,  an  argument,  is  self-conscious. 

3  Sensation  is  the  gateway  of  the  psychophysical  parallel :  by  it,  the 
external  world  beyond  the  periphery  of   the  body  invades  the  soul. 
Motive  is  another  gateway :  by  it,  the  external  world  within  the  peri- 
phery of  the  body  invades  the  soul, — in  short,  bodily  energy  becomes 
or  awakes  psychic  activity. 


144 

terms  to  assert  a  psychology  of  unconsciousness  ;  yet 
we  may  know  it  by  its  manifested  acts. 

Values  give  quality  and  substance  (that  is,  power)  to 
ideals,  by  transmitting  to  them  the  power  of  motive.  A 
value,  in  this  sense,  is  a  judgment  of  the  intellect,  work- 
ing below  the  plane  of  consciousness  ;  an  ideal  is  an  as- 
piration of  the  heart ;  a  motive  is  a  direction  of  the  will 
The  value  of  an  ideal  is  realized  by  the  motive,  which 
must  be  sufficient  and  appropriate. 

Ideals  lend  dignity  to  motives,  the  dignity  of  value. 
Without  value,  there  is  not  motive,  but  pure  impulse.  In 
the  senses  of  this  relation,  an  ideal  is  a  conception  of 
the  intellect,  a  motive  is  a  feeling  of  the  heart;  and  a 
value  is  a  projection  of  the  will.  The  ideal  in  a  motive 
is  embodied  in  the  value,  which  must  be  sufficient  and 
worthy. 

Motives  produce  energy  in  values,  the  pure  energy  of 
ideals.  In  this  relation,  a  motive  is  a  causation  of  the 
intellect ;  a  value  is  an  affection  of  the  heart ;  and  an 
ideal  is  a  prevision  of  the  will.1 

As  the  imagination,  the  memory,  the  judgment,  and 
reason  itself,  are  no  longer  to  be  considered  separate 
faculties  of  the  mind,  but  facilities,  functionings,  modes 
of  operation  involving  the  whole  mind,  so  intellection, 
volition,  and  emotion  —  consciousness,  subconsciousness, 
and  unconsciousness  —  are  also  to  be  considered  as 
modes  of  operation  involving  the  whole  mind.  The  old 

1  Students  of  historical  philosophy  will  recognize  the  first  group  of 
theses  as  derived  from  Kant,  the  second  from  Plato,  and  the  third  from 
Schopenhauer.  Similarly,  we  may  characterize  the  three  departments  of 
government:  ( i)  legislative  as  intellectual,  executive  as  moral,  and  judicial 
as  emotional;  (2)  legislative  as  moral,  executive  as  emotional,  and  judi- 
cial as  intellectual ;  (3)  legislative  as  emotional,  executive  as  intellectual, 
and  judicial  as  moral.  The  first  is  the  doctrine  of  pure  monarchy;  the 
second  that  of  pure  aristocracy ;  and  the  third  that  of  pure  democracy. 
Actual  government  tries  to  coalesce  and  to  average  all  of  these.  Hart, 
Actual  Government,  chapter  iii,  §  18. 


H5 

psychology  of  intellect,  will,  and  heart  was  true,  for  all 
science  is  by  definition  truth ;  but  it  comprehended  only 
a  few  features,  and  those  chiefly  mechanical,  of  the 
truth  at  present  known  of  the  mind  of  man.1 

As  we  need  a  psychology  of  habit  as  well  as  of  mental 
acts ;  as  we  need  a  psychology  of  subconsciousness  as 
well  as  of  consciousness  ;  and  as  we  need  a  psychology 
of  emotion  and  of  volition  as  well  as  of  intellection  ;  so 
also  do  we  need  a  psychology  of  production  and  of  crea- 
tion as  well  as  of  reception  and  of  repetition.  Our  modern 
psychology  is  but  the  nucleus  of  the  psychology  that 
will  be  when  we  complete  the  sphere  of  our  inquiry. 
The  essence  of  the  matter,  of  the  entire  matter  as  well 
as  of  this  apparently  paradoxical  phase  of  ideals,  values, 
and  motives,  is  mental  functioning  whose  second  power 
as  seen  in  culture3  is  always  productive,  creative,  and 
serviceable. 

When  one  knows  something  new,  there  are  three  kinds 
of  uses  to  which  one's  mind  puts  the  new  knowledge. 
One  use  is  to  hold  it  in  memory,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, as  reserve  knowledge,  which  functions  in  its  sim- 
plest mode  when  reproduced  in  kind.3  A  musician  learns 
a  nocturne  :  he  plays  it  accurately.  A  second  use  is  to 
hold  the  knowledge  in  memory,  not  as  such,  but  in  com- 
position with  other  similar  knowledge.  The  new  know- 
ledge functions  in  a  more  complex  manner  when  the 
knower  delivers  it  changed  in  form  and  perhaps  in  sub- 
stance, but  true  to  its  own  essential  nature.  A  musician 
learns  many  selections  ;  he  plays  an  original  composition 

1  Royce,  Outlines  of  Psychology,  Preface,  p.  viii. 

2  Pseudo -culture  may  always  be  distinguished  from  the  genuine  in 
that  it  is  always  critical,  censorious,  self-conscious,  and  never  constructive. 

3  There  enters  here  the  question  as  to  the  value  in  education  of  mere 
repetition  after  the  recollection  is  perfectly  established.  The  new  thought 
or  activity  is  already  established  and  has  effected  its  result:  the  repeti- 
tion makes  the  net  of  routine.    But  repetition  with  new  elements  added 
widens  the  highroad  of  recollection,  and  may  even  solidify  the  roadbeds. 


146 


THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 


with  echoes  and  overtones  and  the  spirit  of  the  original 
music.  A  third  use  is  to  acquire  the  knowledge,  but  to 
absorb  it,  making  it  part  and  parcel  of  one's  own  mental 
life.  The  new  knowledge  functions  in  a  manner  that  does 
not  permit  of  its  representation  as  it  was.  A  musician 
learns  the  science  and  art  of  music  ;  and  becomes  a  poet 
or  an  orator  or  a  physician,  employing  only  the  power 
that  the  music  gave  his  intellect,  his  will,  his  soul.  The 
knowledge  functions  simply  and  plainly ;  or  complexly 
and  obscurely ;  or  occultly  and  vitally.  The  knower 
may  learn  or  think  or  create  because  of  what  he  knows. 
In  the  last  case,  his  knowledge  functions  as  education, 
as  education  pure,  simple,  and  perfect.1 


734*  Intellect 

Sensation  I  Peripheral 

(    Central 
Attention 
Perception 
Colligation 
Appreciation 
Idea 

Cognition 
Conception 
Recognition 
Recollection 
Memory 
Notion 
Assimilation 
Differentiation 
Judgment 
Understanding 
Imagination 
Fancy 
Reason 
Thought 
Docility 
Etc. 


The  Feelings 
Pain 
Pleasure 
Emotion 
Passion 
Love 
Fear 
Hate 

Appreciation 
Like 
Dislike 
Affection 
Disaffection 
Sensitiveness 
Etc. 


The  Will 

Instinct 

Tropism 

Initiative 

Imitation 

Opposition 

Impulse 

Conation 

Motive 

Purpose 

Habit 

Courage 

Fortitude 

Patience 

Persistence 

Recurrence 

Etc. 


1  This  opinion  should  be  discriminated  from  the 
opinion  that  a  judgment  trained  for  one  class  or 
character  of  facts  is  valid  for  all  other  classes  or 
for  any  other  class.  This  latter  opinion  has  been 
successfully  controverted.  Bagley,  The  Educative 
Process,  chapter  xiii. 


THE   NEW   EDUCATION  147 

These  terms  are  not  proposed  as  mutually  exclusive  or  as 
in  systematic  order  ;  as  complete  or  as  necessary  to  complete- 
ness ;  or  finally  as  purely  scientific  ;  but  they  are  proposed 
as  obviously  convincing  evidence  that  psychology  is  the  sub- 
stance of  the  science  of  education. 

But  pure  or  theoretical  psychology  is  by  no  means  all 
of  the  subject.  Almost  as  important  is  physiological 
psychology,  which  deals  with  the  nervous  system  as  the 
instrument  of  the  mind.  Closely  allied  with  this  is  phy- 
siology itself,  with  the  associated  sciences  of  anatomy 
and  of  pathology.  Subsumed  under  them  all  are  genetic 
psychology  and  biogenetic  or  biological  psychology.  So 
vast  is  the  range  of  these  sciences,  so  incredibly  vast 
their  present  content,  and  so  exhausting  to  the  imagina- 
tion their  possible  inquiries,  that  I  hesitate  to  make  any 
suggestions  as  to  their  meaning  and  as  to  their  truth 
for  education.1  And  yet  because  this  hesitation  may  be 
misunderstood  or  resented,  I  note  a  few  topics. 

The  physical  and  the  psychical  determinants  of  the  limen 
of  consciousness. 

The  rate  of  physico-psychical  action. 

The  content  of  consciousness. 

Psychophysical  parallelism. 

Motor  and  sensory  diatheses. 

Nascent  periods  when  interests  first  appear  in  the  soul. 

The  history  of  the  animal  soul. 

The  animal  body,  from  fish  via  true  animal  to  man. 

1  The  results  of  education  may  be  stated  in  the  terms  of  physiological 
psychology. 

1.  The  psychophysical  rate  is  increased:   the  educated  man  thinks 
faster  than  before. 

2.  The  field  of  consciousness  at  each  instant  is  enlarged:  he  judges 
by  means  of  more  facts. 

3.  Attention  is  more  positively  central :  he  "  sees  "  more  clearly. 

4.  Recollection  is  heightened  and  deepened  in  tone ;  and  desire  en- 
forces prompter  and  surer  recall :  he  remembers  better. 

5.  The  peripheral  or  penumbral  subconsciousness  is  within  partial 
control :  he  thinks,  in  a  measure,  of  what  he  chooses  to  think. 


148  THE   MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

Defects  of  the  special  senses  :  vision  and  muscular  accom- 
modation of  eye  ;  deafness ;  etc. 

Spinal  curvature. 

Psychoses. 

Neuroses. 

Normal  and  abnormal  rates  of  growth  :  genetic  physiology. 

Anthropometry. 

Gymnastics  ;  athletics  ;  play ;  games. 

Feeblemindedness  :  idiocy,  imbecility,  etc. 

Cretinism,  epilepsy,  chorea,  etc. 

Arrests  of  development. 

Genius,  precocity,  belatedness,  etc. 

Ontogeny  and  phylogeny. 

Food  in  physiology  and  in  psychology. 

Obsession,  paranoia,  melancholia,  etc. 

Narcotics  and  stimulants. 

Localizations  of  functions. 

Sex  development,  puberty,  adolescence. 

Periodicity. 

Conversion,  regeneration,  etc. 

Heredity,  environment,  etc. 

Race. 

Sense-memory. 

The  intellectual,  volitional,  and  emotional  elements  in  sen- 
sation. 

Corporal  punishment. 

The  minds  of  various  animals. 

Cross  heredity  ;  masculine  woman  •  bisexed  mind ;  etc. 

True  and  space  senses  ;  other  special  senses. 

Fatigue.1 

Closely  related,  of  course,  to  psychology  and  to  physi- 
ology is  pathology,  to  which  an  entire  profession  devotes 
itself.  It  is  a  question  whether  a  person  who  has  never 

1  See  the  files  of  Pedagogical  Seminary  and  of  Journal  of  Psychology; 
Adolescence :  its  Psychology  ;  bibliographies,  in  Educational  Review  ; 
Baldwin,  Dictionary  of  Philosophy  and  Psychology  ;  etc.  A  thousand 
other  titles  seem  quite  as  important,  though  perhaps  not  quite  so  near 
the  beginning  of  these  sciences. 


THE    NEW   EDUCATION  149 

experienced  a  pathological  state  has  fully  entered  into 
the  life  of  civilized  humanity ;  and  for  two  reasons.  Of 
these,  the  first  is  that  the  perfectly  healthy  man  is  one 
whose  mind  has  never  overcome  and  exhausted  his  body; 
whereas,  until  such  reduction  of  the  body  to  the  mind, 
certain  states  of  consciousness  that  teach  man  his  na- 
ture are  never  realized.  Perfect  health  knows  neither 
ecstasy  nor  exhaustion,  both  clearly  pathological  states, 
that  build  echoing  halls  in  the  soul.  The  second  reason 
is  that  one  knows  his  fellows  only  through  a  sympathy 
that  comprehends  from  experience.  Never  to  be  ill, 
never  to  be  wounded,  never  to  be  weak,  never  to  be  ex- 
cited or  too  weary  for  hunger  or  for  sleep,  never  to  be 
face  to  face  with  death,  never  to  know  pain,  is  never  to 
feel  the  common  emotions  of  humanity,  and,  therefore, 
would  seem  to  be  isolation  from  humanity.1  Taking  life 
as  a  school  (and  what  else  is  it  ?),  one  might  also  be  jus- 
tified in  looking  upon  disease  and  the  causes  and  condi- 
tions of  disease  as  among  the  privileges  of  humanity. 
To  the  animal,  a  serious  disease  means  death ;  to  the 
man,  environed  by  knowledge  and  skill,  it  means  educa- 
tion. Sickness  has  bound  more  persons  together  in  com- 
mon affection  than  all  other  causes  for  sympathy  taken 
together.  Moreover,  it  has  taught  men  more  of  Nature 
than  all  other  agencies  taken  together.  The  chief  motive 
in  science  is  the  desire  to  know  the  causes  of  disease. 
Pathology  is  the  heart  of  all  sciences.  Pain  is  the 
mother  of  progress.2 

Closely  related  to  pathology  is  criminology,  broadly 
defined.  Unfortunately,  crime  is  partly  an  artificial  mat- 
ter, a  thing  of  definition,  of  tradition,  of  custom,  rather 
than  of  reason,  for  a  crime  is  a  deed  supposed  to  be 

1  Nietzsche,  Uebermensch. 

2  Pain  is  the  original  sense.    Wundt,  Human  and  Animal  Psycho- 
logy, pp.  223-232.   Its  recollection  causes  fear,  which  forces  improvement. 
Darwin,  Origin  of  Species,  chapter  viii. 


ISO  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

both  a  s'm  and  a  sanction,1  a  deed  at  once  wrong  and  for- 
bidden. A  sin,  morally,  is  a  deed  of  harm  to  one's  self 
or  to  one's  neighbors,  an  act  of  injury,  an  evidence  of 
malice.  A  crime  is  a  deed  against  the  law  as  expressed 
by  government.2  Were  government  perfectly  intelli- 
gent and  perfectly  righteous,  every  crime  would  be  a 
sin;  and  whatever  sin  was  sufficiently  injurious  to  one's 
self  or  to  one's  neighbors  to  threaten  the  welfare  of 
society  would  be  a  crime ;  and  nothing  else  would  be. 
But  because  there  are  some  crimes  not  essentially  sinful, 
and  many  sins  not  legally  recognized  as  criminal ;  there- 
fore, crime  is  partly  an  artificial  and  partly  a  defective 
matter.  And  yet  criminology,  the  science  of  the  preven- 
tion and  cure  of  crime,  is  a  subject  of  no  slight  importance 
not  only  to  statesmen,  but  also  to  educators,  because  if  all 
educators  understood  perfectly  how  to  educate,  the  sins 
that  are  crimes  would  never  be  committed,  for  there  would 
be  no  sinners,  and  the  crimes  that  are  not-sins  would 
be  erased  from  the  statute  books.  Then  all  lawmakers 
would  be  moralists ;  and  no  moralist  can  tolerate  the 
notion  of  forbidding  and  punishing  as  a  crime  any  act 
that  is  not  dangerous  to  one's  self  or  to  one's  fellows. 

Criminology  stands  to  education  in  much  the  same 
relation  as  that  in  which  pathology  stands  to  medicine  ; 
for  as  the  essence  of  medicine  is  hygiene,  so  the  essence 
of  education  is  conduct.3  The  pathological  state  is  the 
result  of  unhygienic  living  or  conditions,  while  the  crimi- 
nal state  is  the  result  of  a  soul  or  of  an  environment  that 
knows  not  education.  Only  the  uneducated  are  criminal  ? 
Not  that.  There  are  criminals  whose  deeds  were  not  sins. 
Only  the  uneducated  are  sinful  ?  Not  that.  But  only  the 
incompletely  educated  are  sinful,  for  the  very  commission 

1  Bouvier,  Law  Dictionary;  also,  files  of  Penology,  especially  Collins, 
1891,  pp.  27-29,  and  Wey,  1891,  pp.  57-69. 
*  Holmes,  Common  Law,  pp.  49,  50. 
1  Royce,  Outlines  of  Psychology,  chapter  xv. 


THE   NEW   EDUCATION  151 

of  sin  is  evidence  of  the  incompletely  evolved  soul.1 
Exactly  as  a  man  who  is  perfectly  well  and  entirely  iso- 
lated from  infection  is  certain  not  to  develop  disease,  so 
the  man  who  is  perfectly  educated  and  entirely  isolated 
from  ignorance  (or  from  the  ignorant)  will  not  develop 
sin.  Of  course,  such  a  proposition  requires  a  special  de- 
finition of  education,  the  definition  to  which  this  entire 
book  is  devoted. 

On  two  grounds,  the  double  question  is  sometimes  asked 
whether  ignorant  or  uneducated  persons  can  be  moral  or  any- 
thing but  moral.  In  Romans,  Paul  argued  upon  one  line 
in  answer.  A  perfectly  ignorant  man  with  a  mind  of  normal 
powers  is  impossible.  Only  the  idiot  is  perfectly  ignorant, 
thought-proof.  Ignorance,  therefore,  requires  definition.  This 
much  is  certain  :  the  man  who  knows  nothing  in  the  premises 
cannot  be  guilty  because  he  is  not  malicious,  but  no  more  is 
he  righteous,  for  he  cannot  be  making  a  choice  between  right 
and  wrong.  All  one's  knowledge  lies  within  the  range  of 
his  morality.  A  child  cannot  steal.  A  boy  legislator  cannot 
betray  the  public  welfare.  The  conscript  seldier,  firing  in  his 
squad,  does  not  commit  murder.  Taking,  voting,  shooting,  — 
whether  in  ignorance  or  under  duress ;  whether  mechanical 
or  spontaneous  or  superstitious,  —  if  without  understanding, 
cannot  be  sins.  The  illiterate  heir  to  an  estate  who  signed  a 
paper  giving  away  the  title  was  not  generous.  The  childless 
uncle  who  at  his  death  left  his  fortune  to  his  nephews  de- 
served no  gratitude.  The  intention,  which  is  conditioned  by 
knowledge,  makes  the  deed  good  or  evil.2 

The  sinner  precedes  or  commits  the  crime.  The  func- 
tions of  criminology,  therefore,  are  three :  to  discrimi- 
nate among  crimes  the  sins  and  the  not-sins,  to  prevent 
sins,  and  to  reform  sinners.  The  criminologist  owes  it 
to  humanity  to  persuade  the  State  to  abolish  all  crimes 
that  are  not-sins ;  he  should  study  the  causes  of  sin  that 

1  Beecher,  The  Conflict  of  Ages,  pp.  36,  37. 

1  This  is  the  familiar  point  of  agreement  between  the  law  of  the  land 
and  the  ethics  of  the  schools. 


152  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

lie  in  the  conditions  of  society  as  well  as  those  that  lie 
in  the  nature  of  the  sinner,  and  should  persuade  the 
State  to  remedy  those  conditions  ;  and  he  should  study 
the  sinful  and  the  methods  of  reforming  them. 

The  criminologists,  however,  are  few  ;  and  criminology 
is  but  in  its  beginnings  as  a  science.  The  evaluations  of 
sins  are  often  absurd,1  while  the  punishments,  if  any,  are 
often  scarcely  less  absurd.  Every  criminologist  should 
be  fundamentally  an  educator.  The  science  of  education 
must  have  criminology  as  one  of  its  foundations  ;  or,  to 
speak  conversely,  criminology  is,  in  greatest  portion,  but 
a  department  of  education. 

We  educate,  or  rather  train  (or,  shall  I  say,  instruct) 
for  the  routine  of  life  ;  and  the  educated  like  the  unedu- 
cated fail,  seem  ever  to  fail,  in  times  of  crisis.  It  is  a  mat- 
ter of  familiar  knowledge  that  skilled  mechanics  and  men 
or  women,  who  are  manually,  that  is,  organically,  edu- 
cated, are  never  to  be  found  in  penitentiaries  or  jails. 
The  graduate  of  the  professional  school,  the  graduate  of 
the  college,  the  banker,  the  merchant,  the  clerk,  the  hotel- 
keeper,  the  bar-tender,  the  laborer,  the  foreigner,  and 
even  the  farmer  :  all  these  are  to  be  found  among  the 
criminals,  for  they  may  become  criminals.  But  almost  no 
mechanics  and  almost  no  mothers  are  ever  to  be  found 
within  prison-walls.  Why  are  these  facts  what  they  are  ? 

Consider  the  greater  sins,  forgetting  which  of  them  are 
crimes.  These  are  treachery,  lying,  stealing,  fornicating, 

1  "  The  underpaid  labor,  the  prolonged  and  groveling  drudgery,  the 
wasted  strength,  and  misery  and  squalor,  the  diseases  resulting,  and  the 
premature  deaths  that  would  be  prevented  by  a  just  distribution  of 
the  products  of  labor,  would  in  a  single  year  outweigh  all  the  so-called 
crime  of  a  century,  for  the  prevention  of  which,  it  is  said,  government 
alone  exists.  This  ignoring  of  great  evils  that  constitute  civilized  society 
a  vast  theatre  of  woe,  while  so  violently  striking  at  small  evils,  is  the 
mark  of  an  effete  civilization,  and  warns  us  of  the  approaching  dotage 
of  the  race."  Ward,  Psychic  Factors  of  Civilization,  p.  320.  Cf.  Ross, 
"  The  Criminaloid,"  Atlantic  Monthly,  January,  1907. 


THE   NEW   EDUCATION  153 

bribing,  assault,  destroying.  All  are  characterized  by 
getting  something  for  less  than  its  value,  by  perverting 
something  from  its  natural  function,  or  by  sheer  animal 
violence  ;  and  they  may  all  be  resolved  into  ecstasies  of 
body  or  of  soul  or  of  both  ;  whereas  soul  and  body  should 
be  harmonious.  These  ecstasies  consist  in  forgetting 
one's  self  or  one's  neighbors  and  in  giving  way  to  cen- 
trally excited  sensations  or  feelings  or  desires  in  wanton 
disregard  of  results.1 

A  thousand  crises  must  be  faced  in  an  active  life. 
The  wise  and  righteous  man  passes  every  crisis  success- 
fully and  becomes  a  master  of  men :  or  he  may  have  failed 
in  some  crises,  only  to  learn  from  his  failures  and  to 
pass  later  crises  successfully.  Of  course,  most  men  start 
with  handicaps,  it  may  be  of  body  or  of  family,  of  hered- 
ity or  of  environment.  But  the  race  is  not  always  to  the 
swift  or  the  battle  always  to  the  strong.2  The  worst 
handicaps  are  propensities  to  sins  :  yet  these  are  the 
handicaps  most  neglected  by  the  secular  education  of  the 
times,  which  persistently  forgets  the  inferior  many  and 
theorizes  too  much  about  the  superior  few. 

Now  become  plain  the  two  reasons  why  skilled  me- 
chanics and  devoted  mothers  are  almost  immune  to  sins 
so  bad  as  to  constitute  crimes  :  the  mechanic  by  reason 
of  his  art  or  craft  has  learned,  has  become  habituated 
to,  physical  self-control,  is  almost  incapable  of  ecstasy, 
cannot  forget  himself ;  while  the  mother  by  reason  of 
housework,  of  maternity,  of  care  of  husband  and  chil- 
dren, has  become  habituated  to  equal  self-control,  is  also 
incapable  of  any  ecstasy  save  that  of  forgetting  herself 
through  devotion  to  others.  Sin  can  find  no  material  in 

1  A  peripheral  sensation  may  have  been  the  occasion  of  the  central 
excitement;  but  the  complete  disturbance,  the  overthrow  of  the  psychi- 
cal equilibrium,  is  due  to  the  presence  in  the  soul  of  old  memories,  ances- 
tral tropisms,  hitherto  established  dispositions  that  cause  the  whole  being 
to  vibrate  and  oscillate  in  irrational  tumult. 

2  Cf.  Ecclesiastes  ix,  n. 


154  THE    MACHINERY    OF   EDUCATION 

mechanics  or  mothers,  who  have  learned  real  values 
in  terms  of  labor  and  of  interest  and  who  have  little 
time  or  energy  for  desiring  something  for  nothing. 
Sin  tempts  mechanics  and  mothers  and  such  as  they 
are  chiefly  in  the  form  of  intoxicants  to  tide  them 
over  periods  of  undue  weariness.  He  whom  a  rational 
art  and  poverty  combine  to  master  is  safe  against  his 
own  wantonness  and  the  powers  of  this  world.  Convert, 
therefore,  thy  ambition  into  art  and  thy  wealth  into 
tools  and  thyself  into  a  servant  of  many :  for  this  is  the 
highway  to  the  kingdom  of  God,  which  is  joy,  peace, 
love  in  the  secret  recesses  of  the  soul. 

Another  science  of  vast  importance  to  education 
would  be  political  economy,  but  a  pseudo-science  con- 
tinues to  masquerade  under  that  name.  The  true  poli- 
tical economy  deals  with  the  management  of  the  wealth 
of  the  State  as  a  domestic  concern.1  Blind  natural  law  is 
repudiated  by  sound  political  economy,  as  it  is  by  every- 
thing else  that  is  sane  and  civilized.  Moreover,  a  sane 
political  economy  recognizes  that  in  modern  days  we  do 
not  deal  in  wealth-as-such,  but  in  property-in-wealth, 
not  in  goods  free,  but  in  goods  owned,  that  is,  in  goods 
conditioned  by  public  and  private  law. 

The  fundamental  assumption  of  modern,  current  poli- 
tical economy  is  this :  "  The  starting-point  in  all  human 
activity  is  the  existence  of  wants."  2  This  is,  of  course, 
a  fallacy,  for  a  want  implies  a  power  to  want.  This  is 
a  priori  truth.  A  posteriori,  we  know  that  all  human 
activity  in  fact  is  the  result  of  powers.  To  apply  the 
Aristotelian  test,  —  who  wants  most  ?  The  sickest  man. 
Who  is  least  active?  He  who  is  most  ill.  Again,  who  is 
most  active  ?  The  man  of  greatest  power.  A  similar 

1  Political  economy,  irt\is=  city  (State) ;  oficoj  =  household ;  v6fi.os  = 
order.  Cf.  Ruskin,  Unto  this  Last ;  Fors  Clavigera. 

1  Seligman,  Principlts  of  Economics,  chapter  i,  p.  3.  An  exposition  of 
great  ability,  exactly  wrong. 


THE   NEW  EDUCATION  155 

analysis  shows  that  not  labor  as  such,  but  power  or  en- 
ergy developed  as  skill,  produces  the  typical  modern 
forms  of  abundant  wealth.1 

The  present  common  economic  analysis  gives  the 
distribution  of  wealth  to  land,  to  capital,  to  labor,  to 
management,  to  insurance,  and  to  government.  Every 
educator  should  understand  and  should  teach  his  boys 
and  girls,  his  youth  and  maidens,  to  understand  rent, 
interest,  wages,  profits,  premiums,  and  taxes.  Moreover, 
he  should  understand  real  values  and  money  prices, 
competition  and  cooperation,  and  the  incidence  of  laws. 
Lastly,  he  should  understand  poverty,  luxury,  and  popu- 
lation laws. 

He  who  does  understand  these  elementary  matters 
will  be  an  advocate  of  qualification  tests  for  legislators 
not  less  drastic  than  those  for  physicians.  The  body 
politic  is  the  prey  to  quacks  and  scoundrels :  between 
the  knaves  and  the  fools,  the  public  is  beginning  to  per- 
ish. This  is  the  way  of  all  civilizations.  God  seems  not 
yet  to  reveal  to  men  how  to  produce  enough  good  and 
wise  rulers  to  lead  any  people  forever  forward.  His  will 
appears  to  design  historic  cycles  rather  than  marches.2 

Upon  this  analysis,  the  scientific  elements  for  the  new 
science  of  education  are  disclosed.  But  has  the  science 
of  sciences,  philosophy,  nothing  to  contribute  ?  Has  his- 
tory nothing  ?  Has  literature  nothing  ?  Have  the  arts 
nothing  ?  Vast  stores  of  facts  ;  elevating  ideals  ;  warn- 
ings ;  a  high  hope  for  the  race  ;  pleasures,  emotions, 
leisure,  beauty.  These  are  their  contributions  of  mate- 
rials to  education.  Has  religion  nothing?  Education  is 
the  main  trunk  of  religion.  And  what  of  all  lesser 
knowledges  and  skills  ?  Materials,  suggestions,  devices. 

1  Per  contra,  George,  Progress  and  Poverty.   A  new  science  will  ap- 
pear bearing  to  economics  the  same  relation  that  astronomy  bears  to 
astrology.     Cf.  Patten,  New  Basis  of  Civilization,  chapter  v. 

2  Bryce,  American  Commonwealth,  chapters  viii,  Iviii. 


156  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

The  conclusion  is  that  education  is  something  substan- 
tial, integral,  no  mere  congeries  of  borrowed  ideas. 

Its  individual  nature  and  character  as  a  science  will 
appear  upon  a  consideration  of  the  normal  or  typical 
progress  of  the  child  to  the  old  man.  What  is  the  course  ? 

The  newborn  babe  is  slow  to  discover  the  world,  whose 
light  dawns  upon  him  very  gradually.  What  his  first 
consciousness  was,  no  human  being  as  yet  has  remem- 
bered. It  may  be  from  the  peripherally  excited  sensation 
of  the  change  of  temperature  from  the  womb  to  the 
world  ;  it  may  be  that  of  the  change  from  darkness  to 
light ;  it  may  be  the  pain  of  birth ;  and  it  may  be  that 
even  the  foetus  or  the  embryo  has  consciousness.  Quite 
possibly,  consciousness  is  transmitted  as  part  of  the 
heritage  with  ovum  and  sperm.1  After  birth,  however, 
the  opportunities  and  the  materials  of  consciousness  are 
multiplied.  By  discovering  the  world,  the  babe  discovers 
himself  :  he  discovers  this  self  not  as  body,  but  as  spirit, 
which,  as  he  differentiates  and  integrates  it,  becomes  to 
child  and  man  his  soul  —  his  ego.  After  this  discovery, 
he  is  aware,  upon  certain  occasions  and  in  certain  con- 
ditions, of  himself  as  spectator  and  critic  of  his  conscious- 
ness. 

The  little  child  discovers  himself  through  his  senses, 
but  learns  even  the  locations,  not  to  say  the  functions, 
of  his  senses,  general  and  special,  long  afterwards,  if 
at  all.  He  feels  property  in  himself,  his  body,  its  parts. 
Things  useful  to  him  become  his  own  like  his  body. 
The  property-sense  is  the  first  mental  activity  that  is 
above  sensation  and  attention.  Perception  is  making  an 
idea  one's  own,  that  is,  one's  property.  The  familiar,  the 

1  Angell  and  Thompson,  "  Organic  Processes  and  Consciousness," 
Psychol.  Review,  vi,  1899,  pp.  32—69.  Hobhouse,  Mind  in  Evolution, 
passim.  Hall,  Evolution  of  Consciousness.  Baldwin  and  Cattell,  "Con- 
sciousness and  Evolution,"  Science,  ii,  1895,  pp.  219-222,  271-272. 
Cope,  "  Consciousness  in  Evolution,"  Penn.  Monthly,  vi,  1876,  pp.  560- 
575- 


THE   NEW   EDUCATION  157 

understood,  thing  becomes  proper  to  one  :  with  it,  one  is  at 
home.  Along  with  this  property-sense  grows  a  more  im- 
portant sense  of  the  use  and  function  of  the  bodily  parts 
and  organs  :  a  sense  not  analytic  but  synthetic,  a  sense 
of  power  accompanied  by  a  desire  for  skill.  To  state  this 
double  matter  otherwise :  the  soul  is  forthstepping  to 
conquer  the  world  and  to  possess  it,  and  therefore  takes 
wealth  as  property  and  exercises  itself  in  and  through 
its  body  for  propriety.  Thus  acquisition  and  skill  pro- 
ceed almost  fiari flassu,  for  a  time. 

Before  the  consciousness  of  possessing  a  body  to  be 
trained  is  fully  established,  the  desirability  of  knowing 
the  world  remote  from  hand  and  ear  and  eye  begins  to 
stir  in  the  soul.  Such  is  the  beginning  of  the  search  into 
Nature,  a  search  seldom  abated  voluntarily  while  life 
lasts.  To  possess  things,  to  control  one's  body,  to  know 
the  real  world  :  these  mark  the  limits  of  the  activities  of 
many  men.  To  these,  all  matters  of  religion,  of  family, 
of  politics,  of  society,  of  business,  are  but  tributary,  — 
important,  if  serviceable,  but  otherwise  incidental  and 
often  objectionable.  In  truth,  unless  deliberately  edu- 
cated by  others,  most  human  beings  cannot  compass 
more  than  these  notions  and  functions  of  property,  of 
the  body,  and  of  the  physical  world. 

The  next  stage  in  psychical  growth  is  that  of  return 
to  one's  self,  to  inquire  into  the  real  self.  This  leads  to 
the  discovery  of  soul  and  body,  —  but  words  to  most 
persons.  Their  differentiation  and  recognition  as  inter- 
related but  not  causally  connected  integral  things,  the 
healthful  body  being  a  good  servant  and  the  unhealthful 
a  bad  master,  the  vigorous  soul  respecting  but  regulating, 
even  ruling  the  body,  are  events  of  major  importance 
in  the  course  of  a  complete  education.  To  know  one's 
own  body,  one  must  know  biology,  zoology,  physiology, 
histology,  physics,  chemistry,  mechanics  :  to  know  one's 
own  soul,  one  must  know  philosophy,  history,  literature, 


158  THE   MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

religion,  morality,  government,  psychology ;  for  this  is 
science,  to  connect  one  thing  with  everything  else.1 
Thereby  consciousness  passes  into  self-consciousness.2 

Now  arises  a  new  and  higher  self-control,  the  earlier 
being  physical,  this  being  psychical.  Beyond  self-know- 
ledge and  self-control  lies  self-direction.  Once  more  the 
individual  must  pass  beyond  and  outside  of  himself  to 
know  the  world.  Now  he  must  know  the  world  of  human 
society  so  well,  and  must  trust  himself  so  thoroughly  in 
it,  as  to  will  for  himself  his  course  of  action  in  it.  Such 
an  individual  is  rare,  indeed. 

And  yet  even  now  his  education  is  not  complete.  The 
self-directing  individual  who  can  overcome  society  at 
least  to  the  extent  of  forcing  his  own  way  in  it  may  grow 
into  the  man  of  social  control.  Such  a  man  takes  the 
world  as  his  own  and  overcomes  it.  He  has  learned  to 
think  not  only  for  himself  and  for  his  own,  but  for  most 
other  persons  as  community  and  as  society.  He  becomes 
a  popular  demigod  or  a  national  hero. 

Higher  yet  may  a  man  rise  by  this  zigzagging  between 
world  and  self,  object  and  subject.  He  may  absorb  the 
world  into  his  own  heart  and  yearn  over  it  as  a  mother 
over  a  child,  loving  the  world  better  than  himself,  listen- 
ing to  its  needs,  trying  to  help  humanity  bear  its  burdens 
and  redeem  its  life.  Such  a  man  is  incomprehensible  to 
all  other  men  than  those  of  his  own  measure  and  nature.3 

Consciousness  is  the  first  evidence  of  psychical  pro- 
gress :  to  possess  it  is  a  fundamental  necessity  without 

1  Miinsterberg,  Principles  of  Art  Education,  p.  16  et  passim. 

2  Self -consciousness  is  the  evidence  of  the  soul,  which  can  never  see 
itself,  or  know  its  locus,  or  foresee  its  destiny.    The  discontinuity  of  self- 
consciousness —  far  more  clear  and  complete  than  the  discontinuity  of 
consciousness  —  appears  as  a  mode  of  recurrence  of  the  soul  in  the 
fashion  of  a  tenant  absent  at  times  upon  other  business  incommunicable 
through  the  present  body. 

3  Urban,  "  The  Individual  and  the  Social  Value  Series,"  Philosophi- 
cal Review,  xi,  1900.   Chancellor,  Our  Schools,  p.  310. 


THE    NEW   EDUCATION  159 

which  goodness  and  intelligence  are  meaningless  as 
terms  of  human  morals  and  mental  activity. 

The  second  stage  is  sense-knowledge,  which  gives  at 
onoe  property-in-things  and  property-in-self.  He  is  good 
who  treats  himself  well  and  preserves  his  own  property ; 
and  he  is  intelligent  who  knows  how  to  get  and  how  to 
keep  property  and  how  to  use  his  own  body  for  pleasure 
and  profit.  Of  one  who  is  in  this  stage  and  incapable  of 
going  higher,  selfishness  must  not  be  predicated  as  sin- 
fulness,  or  self-gratification  as  ignorant  narrowness  of 
mind.  Children  of  ten  years  of  age  are  entirely  justified 
in  delighting  in  possessions  and  in  practicing  their  bodily 
powers  in  games  and  in  drills. 

The  third  stage  is  knowledge  of  the  world  of  sense. 
To  be  good  in  this  stage  is  to  enjoy  the  delights  of  sense 
without  surrendering  to  them.  These  delights  are  many, 
and  they  tend  to  feed  and  to  develop  the  "  lust  of  the 
eye  "  and  the  "  pride  of  life."  1  Covetousness  of  property 
sets  in,  because  much  property  enables  one  directly  and  in- 
directly to  gratify  the  senses.2  Sins  flaunt  their  pleasures 
before  one.  The  senses  plead  for  gratification.  Taste 
calls  for  wine,  and  hearing  for  music;  sight  calls  for 
jewels,  and  smell  for  attar  of  roses  ;  touch  calls  for  silks, 
and  temperature  for  perpetual  summer  ;  the  muscles  cry 
for  play  and  for  leisure,  and  sex  for  its  ecstasy ;  pride  calls 
for  the  powers  of  property,  and  vaunts  itself  above  the 
poorer;  and  all  together  demand  money,  which  in  this 
age  short-circuits  to  all  sense-delights.  To  escape  social 
restraints,  one  travels,  indulging  among  strangers  the 
sense-activities  that  seem  vices  among  friends.  Then 
result  thievery,  adultery,  drunkenness,  arson,  murder, 

1  John,  I  Epistle  ii,  16. 

2  Covetousness  is  an  arrest  of  development  in  the  property-age  of 
childhood.  Avarice  is  an  arrest  in  the  next  later  period.  "  The  covetous 
person  is  always  drunken,  day  and  night,  watching  and  sleeping."  Saint 
Augustine,  Homilies,  p.  232. 


160  THE   MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

and  betrayals  of  every  kind.  He  is  good  who  yields  to 
none  of  these  temptations.  He  is  intelligent  who  uses 
every  sense  as  a  tool  for  knowledge  and  for  service. 

Vast  as  is  the  world  opened  to  us  by  the  senses,  it  is 
small  and  trivial  compared  with  the  world  of  the  higher 
stage  of  the  soul.  He  is  good  in  this  fourth  stage  who 
does  everything  in  love  of  himself  and  of  his  neighbor, 
conceiving  that  I  and  my  neighbor  are  upon  a  journey 
that  is  never  to  end.1  And  he  is  intelligent  who  so  orders 
his  days  and  his  acts  that  all  contribute  to  permanent 
good,  to  enduring  welfare  of  one's  self  and  of  one's 
neighbors.  This,  of  course,  is  obvious ;  and  yet  it  is 
possible  to  enter  upon  this  stage  of  knowledge  of  body 
and  soul  and  to  sin  there  far  more  terribly  than  in  any 
earlier  stage  of  development.  Many  have  betrayed  their 
own  souls.2  So  high  is  this  stage  that  the  State  scarcely 
attempts  to  punish  such  sins  as  crimes.  There  are  trea- 
sons against  society  organized  as  the  State  more  horrid 
than  to  furnish  news  or  supplies  to  an  enemy  in  war. 
These  are  the  treasons  that  rot  society,  poisoning  the 
fountain-head  of  social  justice.  It  is  the  kind  of  sin  that 
to  Dante  seemed  most  awful.3  To  make  righteousness  a 

1  The  most  effective  sermon  that  I  ever  heard  was  preached  in  Provi- 
dence about  the  year  1888  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Alexander  Mackenzie  of 
Cambridge  upon  the  eternal  life.  At  its  climax,  he  said  that  David  had 
asked  for  a  long  life,  for  threescore  years  and  ten.    It  is  glorious  to  live 
out  one's  life  for  seventy  years.    But  why  not  plan  for  seventy  thousand 
years  ?  Why  not  plan  to  live  throughout  eternity  ?    Cf.  Royce,  The  Im- 
plications of  Self -consciousness  ;   The   World  and  the  Individual ;  both 
passim.    Also,  James,  Human  Immortality. 

2  I  remember  with  peculiar  vividness  a  conversation  with  President 
Julius  H.  Seelye  of  Amherst,  who  said  that  of  all  the  mysteries  of  life, 
the  most  mysterious  to  him  was  that  God  established  a  reasonable  being 
who  could  yet  act  unreasonably.   He  considered  sin  of  this  character 
evidence  of  free  will. 

3  In  his  age,  this  took  the  form  of  "  the  simony  of  the  Popes."  One  of 
its  worst  modern  forms  is  the  manufacture  of  public  opinion  by  news- 
paper accounts  that  build  up  fictions  into  the  verisimilitude  of  facts  and 
thereby  deceive  even  the  elect. 


THE   NEW   EDUCATION  161 

mock,  to  pollute  the  intelligence  of  man,  woman,  child, 
community,  nation,  to  teach  vileness  as  evidence  of 
smartness  :  these  have  been  the  ambition  of  some,  whose 
names  are  unfit  for  these  pages. 

The  fifth  stage  is  yet  higher.  Few  have  ever  attained 
it.  To  become  self-directed  in  the  world,  to  know  the 
time-spirit  and  to  work  freely  with  it  or  against  it,  —  this 
is  beyond  the  limits  of  the  minds  of  nearly  all  men.  But 
what  is  it  for  the  self -directing  man  to  be  good  ?  This  : 
never  to  secure  one's  own  end  at  any  cost  to  another. 
And  what  is  it  to  be  intelligent  ?  To  know  how  to  secure 
one's  own  end.  He,  therefore,  who  is  both  wise  and 
good,  the  self-directing  man  of  intelligence  and  of  per- 
sonal and  social  morality,  secures  his  own  ends  without 
injury  to  others.  Only  the  genius,  only  a  few  among 
geniuses,  can  accomplish  this.  The  rest  make  a  wreck 
of  those  about  them. 

Yet  higher  is  social  control.  He  is  good  who  sets  the 
world  about  him  to  the  work  of  its  own  development,  and 
he  is  intelligent  who  so  directs  that  work  as  to  produce 
prosperity  among  his  people.  And  he  is  evil  who  sets 
the  world  to  do  work  for  himself ;  and  he  foolish  who 
fails  finally  in  his  effort.  Napoleon  lived  in  this  stage  of 
personal  evolution  ;  and  failed  because  he  was  mainly 
bad  and  became  foolish.  Washington  succeeded  in  this 
stage. 

The  imagination  of  man  compasses  yet  one  higher 
stage,  comprehension  of  the  world-spirit,  relating  it  to 
the  time-spirit,  and  interpreting  it  by  the  personal  spirit. 
This  stage  includes  every  other,  includes  social  direction, 
self-direction,  knowledge  of  body  and  soul,  sense-know- 
ledge, physical  skill,  property  in  things  and  in  one's  own 
body  and  consciousness.  Plato  and  Socrates  failed  to 
attain  this  stage,  the  one  lacking  self-surrender  and  the 
other  social  mastery.  Lincoln  failed  to  attain  it,  lacking 
but  one  grace. 


162  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

The  Gospel  story  of  Jesus  Christ,  which  upon  internal 
evidence  appears  to  be  defective  as  well  as  erroneous, 
nevertheless  reveals  the  ideal  person  and,  therefore, 
the  redeemer  of  mankind.  According  to  the  story,  the 
Master  passed  through  every  stage  and  through  nearly 
every  experience  in  every  stage  until  He  attained  the 
highest.  As  a  boy,  He  was  taken  down  into  Egypt,  an 
experience  of  travel  and  sojourn  very  useful  in  securing 
self-alienation.  Later,  He  acquired  a  manual  art.  Though 
forced  into  early  self-consciousness  by  his  experience 
with  the  doctors  in  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem,  He  re- 
mained obedient  to  his  parents  throughout  adolescence. 
Whether  the  story  of  the  temptation  in  the  wilderness 
by  the  devil  be  allegorical  or  historical,  what  it  displays 
is  that  Jesus  became  conscious  that  a  man  of  his  powers 
might  master  the  world.  Later,  his  followers  desired 
to  make  Him  King,  but  what  He  had  already  renounced 
as  a  matter  of  securing  by  force  of  ability  He  again 
renounced  even  as  a  matter  of  receiving  by  social  favor. 
By  preaching,  by  teaching,  and  by  healing,  He  had  set 
the  beginnings  of  a  new  order  among  men.  Meantime, 
He  had  consorted  with  publicans  and  harlots  and  had 
been  tempted  by  every  pleasure  of  the  senses,  yet  had 
overcome.  Finally,  though  well  aware  that  He  might 
escape  by  deceit  or  by  flight  or  by  an  army  of  angels, 
He  submitted  to  an  illegal  and  unjust  sentence  and 
accepted  an  ignominious  death  on  the  cross  rather  than 
set  a  whole  world  in  chaos.  Like  Socrates,  Jesus  had 
lived  by  the  laws  of  his  country  and  therefore  would 
die  by  them.  Such,  in  outline,  is  the  record  of  the  only 
sinless  man  who  achieved  social  power.  Buddha  almost 
attained  ;  perhaps  he  did  in  reality.  But  for  most  men 
such  an  end,  indeed,  any  end  is  a  horror,  for  we  have  not 
achieved  the  victory  over  death.  To  achieve  this,  it  is 
necessary  to  learn  the  world-spirit,  which  involves  pro- 
ceeding consciously  from  stage  to  stage  up  the  long  way 


THE   NEW   EDUCATION  163 

to  world-understanding  through  self-renunciation.  God 
Himself  has  naught  to  gain  by  all  his  labors  through 
all  the  eternities  and  all  the  infinities.  As  far  as  we  know 
or  can  understand,  He  is  the  Alpha  and  the  Omega; 
and  his  beginning  is  as  his  end. 

"  Behold,  thy  God  sublime, 
Through  agonies  of  Time, 
In  silence  and  alone, 
The  King  without  a  crown, 
Unchanged  throughout  all  change, 
The  infinitely  strange, 
Forever  gives  and  gives, 
And  by  His  giving  lives."1 

What,  then,  are  the  purposes  of  education  ?  Consid- 
ered scientifically  and  considered  philosophically,  they 
are  the  same.  Whether  for  men  or  for  women,  they  are 
the  same.  Whether  for  the  children  of  the  rich  and 
of  the  wise,  or  for  those  of  the  poor  and  of  the  ignorant, 
they  are  the  same.  As  far  as  he  has  capacity,  the  indi- 
vidual must  repeat  those  stages  in  the  history  of  the 
race  which  saw  progress  in  social  welfare,  and  should 
attempt  those  stages  in  the  histories  of  the  good  and 
intelligent  individuals  which  lie  within  the  compass  of 
his  developing  powers.  By  recapitulating  the  social  and 
the  personal  processes,  formal  education  proposes  to  de- 
velop as  much  as  possible  as  many  individuals  as  possible. 

And  the  fundamental  motive  in  education  is  to  bring 
man,  the  race,  into  harmony  with  the  will  of  God  for  the 
men  and  women  of  this  world.  One  who  realizes  this 
motive  has  found  "  the  mystery  of  eternity  present  at 
every  hour  of  time."  2 

1  Brook,  Ye  Cannot  Come. 

2  Martineau,  Essays,  vol.  ii,  p.  46. 


CHAPTER   IX 


So  lost  are  we  to  all  genetic  perspective  in  education,  in  opening  everything  intellectual 
to  everybody,  with  no  reference  to  stages  of  development  or  grades  of  ability,  that  it  is 
high  time  to  remember  that  youth  have  a  certain  turn  possumus  that  it  is  dangerous  longer 
to  ignore.  —  HALL,  Adolescence  ;  its  Psychology,  etc.,  vol  ii,  p.  540. 

The  really  essential  point  is  the  independence  of  the  school.  Whenever  a  school  is  con- 
sidered preparatory,  it  suffers.  No  school  is  subordinate  to  another  school ;  each  school, 
college  or  university  has  its  own  life  to  live,  and  its  own  mission  to  fulfill ,  and  that  is  to 
do  its  best  for  the  development  of  the  pupil  during  those  years  in  which  he  is  placed  in  its 
charge ;  and  this  mission  is  best  fulfilled  by  disregarding  everything  else  than  the  good  of 
the  child.  Let  no  power  on  earth  come  between  the  child  and  childhood.  —  HUGHES,  The 
Making  of  Citizens,  p.  279. 

WE  may  classify  the  materials  employed  by  the  formal 
system  of  education  under  three  heads, — the  humani- 
ties, the  sciences,  and  the  arts.  And  we  may  classify  the 
exercises  under  three  heads,  —  study,  recitation,  and 
physical  work. 

The  humanities  are  those  subjects  by  which  humanity 
has  expressed  unsystematically  and  informally  its  know- 
ledge of  -its  own  life,  its  aspirations,  its  reflections,  its 
society,  its  customs,  its  morals.  Literature  and  language, 
grammar  and  rhetoric,  philosophy  and  history,  and  what- 
ever is  subordinate  to  them  or  is  wholly  composed  of 
them,  belong  to  the  humanities. 

The  sciences  are  those  subjects  by  which  humanity 
has  expressed  its  knowledge  of  the  world  beyond  human- 
ity, its  laws,  its  facts,  its  relations,  its  nature,  its  ten- 
dency, and  also  those  by  which  humanity  is  now  able  to 
express  systematically  and  formally  its  knowledge  of  it- 
self. Chemistry,  physics,  biology,  geology,  geography, 
anatomy,  physiology,  psychology,  sociology,  anthropo- 
logy, histology,  botany,  ecology,  philology,  and  many 
other  subordinate  subjects  belong  to  the  sciences. 


THE   FORMAL   SYSTEM    OF   EDUCATION        165 

The  arts  are  those  subjects  by  whose  methods  and 
devices  humanity  expresses  its  mastery  of  the  world  by 
setting  its  objects  in  the  order  or  appearance  of  beauty 
or  of  harmonious  utility.  They  include  music,  painting, 
architecture,  sculpture,  carpentry,  iron  -  working,  and 
many  another  exercise  of  skill.  They  may  be  assigned 
in  groups  under  the  term,  "fine  and  industrial  arts,"  or 
perhaps  with  intermediate  groups  of  art-crafts  and  of 
applied  sciences. 

Not  a  few  subjects  are  difficult  to  classify.  Poetry  is 
both  a  humanity  and  an  art :  medicine  is  both  a  science 
and  an  art,  as  is  education  also  :  or  perhaps  more  exactly, 
medicine  and  education  are  or  should  be  applied  sciences  : 
history  is  both  a  humanity  and  a  science.  Political  sci- 
ence cannot  be  accurately  classified ;  for,  like  political 
economy  and,  to  a  degree,  history,  it  is  composed  of  all 
three  elements. 

By  employing  these  materials  appropriately,  the  formal 
system  of  education  proposes  to  accomplish  the  purposes 
of  the  schopl.  As  introductions  to  the  humanities,  it  has 
invented  two  of  "the  three  R's,"  reading  and  writing; 
as  introductions  to  the  sciences  and  arts,  it  invented 
arithmetic  long  ago,  and  Nature-study  recently;  and  as 
introductions  to  the  arts,  it  invented  drawing  and  scale- 
singing.  I  call  these  affairs  "inventions,"  though  recogniz- 
ing fully  that  in  subject-matter  they  are  either  primitive 
or  puerile  or  both.  It  is  in  their  methods  that  reading, 
writing,  arithmetic,  drawing,  and  singing  are  school  in- 
ventions. 

At  this  point,  we  come  upon  a  singular  matter.  Adults 
of  normal  power  and  children  of  superior,  or  supernor- 
mal, power  may  enter  upon  the  humanities,  upon  the 
sciences,  and  upon  the  arts  without  the  formal  bridging  of 
these  school  arts.  Of  what  use,  then,  are  these  mediate 
methods  ?  First,  to  anticipate  the  natural  maturing  of 
the  powers,  to  hasten  the  process,  and  to  insure  it.  By 


166  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

education,  years  of  experience  may  often  be  saved ;  that 
is,  education  short-circuits  experience.  Second,  to  save 
those  whom  life  by  its  haphazard  and  by  its  apparent 
chaos  would  otherwise  ruin.  This  saving  is  accom- 
plished by  setting  in  order  the  ideas,  and  by  training, 
disciplining,  and  regulating  the  functions,  of  the  mind. 
Third,  to  found  in  the  mind  the  elements  of  knowledge 
before  it  must  face  complexities ;  and  thereby  vastly  to 
broaden  its  talents.  For  without  the  stimulus  of  the 
School  arts,  few  would  ever  be  versatile  or  open-minded 
or  fortified  upon  more  than  a  single  side  of  their  natures. 
Mere  life  tends  to  sharpness,  narrowness,  positiveness  :  it 
is  intense.  The  School  arts  lead  to  roundness,  breadth, 
balance,  for  the  School  is  not  focused  upon  mere  success, 
which  is  survival  among  competitors. 

These  school  arts,  reading,  writing,  arithmetic,  singing, 
drawing,  and  recently  sewing,  bench  work,  and  calisthenics, 
must  not  be  confused  with  the  true  arts  suggested  by  these 
terms.  The  general  public  of  adults  and  the  artists  and 
craftsmen  (as  also  not  a  few  schoolmasters)  are  often,  perhaps 
usually,  wrong  in  their  estimate  of  these  exercises.  The  causes 
of  their  error  are  characteristic :  The  general  public  think 
that  children  and  youth  approach  all  subjects  as  adults  do, 
perhaps  more  slowly  and  weakly,  yet  with  essentially  the  same 
powers.  The  artists  and  craftsmen  suppose  that  the  subjects 
are  pursued  for  their  own  sake,  whereas  in  fact  they  are  pur- 
sued solely  for  the  sake  of  the  students.  The  difference  is 
wholly  a  matter  of  the  point  of  view  with  a  resultant  antipodal 
opposition  in  method.  Because  of  the  difference  in  method, 
reading  is  not  literature,  writing  is  neither  penmanship  nor  lit- 
erary composition,  singing  is  not  music  either  as  science  or 
as  art,  drawing  is  not  etching,  not  painting,  not  architecture, 
not  design,  sewing  is  not  tailoring,  bench  work  is  not  car- 
pentry or  cabinet-making,  and  calisthenics  are  not  gymnas- 
tics ;  but  each  is  an  admirable  preparation  for  its  respective 
art  or  craft,  a  setting  out  toward  a  goal,  a  strengthening  for 
reality. 


THE   FORMAL   SYSTEM    OF    EDUCATION       167 

A  school  art  (contrary  to  popular  notions  and  to  artistic 
prejudices)  is  not  to  be  taken  too  seriously.  The  parent  who 
said  of  her  ten-year-old  son,  "  Well,  I  should  think  Johnny- 
would  not  try  to  write  his  composition  neatly  when  he  knows 
that  his  teacher  will  throw  it  into  the  waste  basket  without  a 
second  reading,"  did  not  understand  child  nature.  John 
could  not  be  persuaded  to  write  at  all,  if  he  supposed  that  his 
little  paper  would  be  photographed  and  reproduced  in  fac- 
simile for  publication  in  a  monthly  magazine  and  treasured 
up  against  him  to  the  day  of  his  death.1 

A  school  art  is  mediate,  its  product  is  ephemeral,  and  its 
motive  is  solely  educational,  being  the  desire  to  grow  rapidly 
and  well.2 

The  formal  system  of  education  takes  the  school  arts,  the 
humanities,  the  sciences,  and  the  true  arts,  and  so  disposes 
their  subject-matter  and  their  exercises  of  method  as  to  pro- 
mote the  growth  of  boys  and  girls  into  healthy,  competent, 
and  happy  men  and  women,  useful  to  one  another ;  or  should 
do  so.  Moreover,  beside  the  school  arts,  there  are  several 
other  knowledges  and  skills  so  strangely  transformed  by  edu- 
cational requirements  as  to  be  only  in  name  what  they  seem 
to  be.  The  general  history  and  even  the  United  States  his- 
tory are  arranged  and  edited  for  school  use  quite  beyond 
identification  with  the  true  subject  of  history.  Literature  is 
emasculated  without  being  feminized,  its  editing  being  a  pro- 
cess partly  of  elimination  and  of  generalization  and  partly  of 
reduction  from  adult  truthfulness  to  educational  serviceabil- 
ity. Geography,  though  confessedly  made  simple,  is  supposed 
to  be  made  also  encyclopedic,  yet  scarcely  one  cycle  is  dis- 
coverable in  it.  However,  geography  is  more  nearly  what  it 
purports  to  be  than  any  other  subject  in  the  curriculum  of  the 
first  seven  or  eight  years. 

The  problem  of  educational  method  is  how  to  arrange 
the  studies,  lessons,  exercises,  games  so  as  really  to  pro- 
mote the  growth  of  the  soul,  to  advance  its  welfare,  to 

1  All  that  John  asks  is  that  his  teacher  and  perhaps  his  mother  learn 
from  his  product  what  he  is. 

2  Kehr,  Geschichte  der  Methodik. 


168  THE   MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

relate  it  happily  and  profitably  to  what  is  best  in  the 
world.  This  is  the  problem  of  pedagogy,  its  function, 
its  responsibility ;  and  I  confess  grave  doubts  as  to  its 
general  success. 

Naturally,  education  in  all  its  lines  of  endeavor,  in 
pedagogy  as  in  everything  else,  has  followed  the  line  of 
least  resistance.  In  this  case,  the  line  has  been  traced 
through  the  traditional  course  in  subject-matter,  partly 
because  it  is  traditional,  partly  because  it  is  subjective 
and  speculative,  partly  because  it  seemed  to  recapitulate 
the  racial  experience,  and  partly  because  human  life  seems 
too  sacred  for  experiment.  The  tradition  is  easy  to  fol- 
low, easy  for  the  conscience  as  well  as  for  the  intellect. 
What  was  good  for  the  father  may  be,  perhaps  must  be, 
good  for  the  son.  All  caste  is  based  upon  this  notion, 
and  caste  has  controlled  ages  and  millions  of  the  civilized. 
The  old  course  has  been  solidly  established  in  the  mind 
of  the  teacher.  He  is  sure  of  its  facts  and  of  its  princi- 
ples, of  its  methods  and  of  its  results.  Every  presump- 
tion is  in  its  favor.  It  made  him  what  he  is.  Now  the 
teacher  is  characteristically  not  self-alienated,  for  he  has 
had  no  "  practical  experience  in  life."  Such  experience 
means  learning  by  undirected  experiment  upon  untried 
affairs.  It  is  "practical  experience"  for  a  theological 
student  to  get  out  among  the  people  as  a  book  agent  or 
street  traction  employee ;  or  for  a  lawyer  to  serve  as.clerk 
in  a  store  ;  or  for  a  college  professor  to  try  farming.  In 
the  popular  sense  of  the  term,  the  practical  man  has  no 
instruction  from  others  and  no  consciously  and  intelli- 
gently worked  out  theory  of  his  own  to  guide  him.  In 
this  sense,  the  practical  man  is  "self-made."  The  value 
of  practical  experience  is  in  securing  thereby  self-aliena- 
tion through  familiarizing  one's  self  with  self-absorbing 
enterprises  of  which  hitherto  one  knew  nothing.  Since 
God  has  made  the  human  mind  a  generally  efficient 
agent,  frequently  by  practical  experience  one  becomes 


THE    FORMAL   SYSTEM   OF  EDUCATION       169 

very  skillful  in  a  strange  art,  of  whose  methods  one 
knows  nothing  scientifically.1  Such  experience,  when 
successful,  breeds  confidence  in  one's  own  powers,  de- 
velops sympathy  with  others,  and  by  projecting  self  out 
of  one's  self  into  the  world  shows  one's  self  to  the  self. 
The  instruction  of  others  can  never  accomplish  so  much 
for  one.  I  do  not  mean  that  the  untaught  artist  will 
surpass  in  skill  one  who  is  well  taught :  far  otherwise.  I 
mean  that  one  who  knows  nothing  beside  what  he  has 
been  taught  and  what  he  has  experienced  in  connection 
with  his  learning  will  never  know  himself. 

The  typical  teacher  has  this  education :  an  elementary 
school  course,  three  or  four  years  of  high  school,  one,  two,  or 
three  years  of  normal  school  or  four  years  of  college.  Then 
he  or  she  immediately  begins  teaching.  All  that  he  knows 
consists  of  home,  of  school,  and  of  friends,  and  nothing  of  a 
world  not  of  home,  not  of  school,  not  of  friends.  But  such  an 
experience  discovers  only  a  part,  a  very  small  part,  of  the  real 
world.  It  is  group  life,  — not  communal,  not  social  life. 

Of  necessity,  so  trained,  the  professional  teacher  is  narrow. 
Here  rests  the  sole  philosophical  justification  of  the  board  of 
education's  consisting  of  laymen  and  looking  with  worldly 
eyes  upon  teachers  and  their  institution,  the  School.  Having 
no  particular  will  or  emotion  in  repeating  in  his  own  school 
the  lessons  taught  him  in  the  schools  of  his  childhood,  the 
teacher  tends  to  rely  upon  his  intellect  alone  and  unfortu- 
nately upon'  but  two  intellectual  functions,  attention  and 
memory,  and  mainly  the  latter.  The  educational  result  is  too 
familiar  to  need  emphasis  here.  The  School,  which  ought 
to  drive  against  inefficiency  and  immorality,  ignores  these 
perils  and  confines  its  weak  efforts  to  illiteracy,  broadly  con- 
ceived. The  applauded  graduate  of  the  school,  the  "  scholar," 
is  a  bookman  and  very  little  more,  seldom  even  a  book 
writer. 

Obviously,  we  must  correct  this  in  the  interests  of  humanity, 
of  progress,  of  sound  culture,  of  social  righteousness.  The 

1  Hadley,  The  Education  of  the  American  Citizen,  Twelfth  Paper. 


170          THE    MACHINERY   OF  EDUCATION 

formal  system  of  education  must  deal  with  far  more  than  it 
yet  sees.1  To  begin  at  the  true  beginning,  education  must 
secure  whole-hearted  and  strong-willed  as  well  as  learned 
teachers. 

As  a  matter  of  self-alienation,  no  experience  in  life  enforces 
such  self-understanding  as  marriage  and  parentage.  And  yet 
by  our  salaries,  and  in  the  case  of  our  women  often  by  our 
rules,  we  forbid  marriage  and  parentage.  As  certainly  as  that 
nothing  that  is  false  to  human  nature  can  last,  this  prescrip- 
tion of  celibacy  for  women  teachers  cannot  last.2 

It  is  a  commonplace  among  school  superintendents  that 
the  youthful  normal  school  graduates  are  too  young  to  teach 
boys  and  girls  over  twelve  years  of  age ;  despite  the  fact  that 
they  are  nearer  them  in  age,  these  girls  have  very  little  sym- 
pathy with,  or  understanding  of,  these  adolescents.  They  do 
better,  we  all  say,  with  young  children.  The  reason  is  per- 
fectly clear.  The  maiden  of  twenty  is  still  in  adolescence,  but 
out  of  childhood.  Adolescence  is  a  true  self-alienation  from 
childhood,  and  gives  a  point  of  view  and  a  perspective  for 
childhood.  The  young  maidens,  the  virgins  of  thirty  years, 
and  the  "  old  maids  "  who  understand  boys  and  girls  above 
thirteen  years  of  age  are  very,  very  few.  Those  who  do  not 
understand  them  are,  of  course,  out  of  place  in  grammar  and 
high  schools.  I  say  "  of  course,"  knowing  that  my  statement 
is  a  challenge  of  existing  conditions.  I  am  ready  to  agree 
that  the  unmarried  young  man  is  quite  as  much  out  of  place 
in  grammar  or  high  school  as  the  unwedded  woman.  My  pro- 
position is  very  broad.  As  the  legal  profession,-  the  clerical, 
and  the  medical  is  composed  mostly  of  men  who  are  husbands 
and  fathers,  I  believe  that  the  educational  profession  should  be 
composed  mostly  of  parents. 

But,  it  may  be  objected,  we  have  no  ban  upon  married  men 
in  the  profession.  Many  and  many  a  time,  I  have  known 
boards  of  education  to  refuse  to  appoint  a  man  with  a  wife 
and  family  to  a  position  paying  but  eight  hundred  or  a  thou- 

1  Tyler,  Growth  and  Education. 

*  The  City  of  New  York,  the  District  of  Columbia,  and  several  other 
municipalities  now  employ  married  women  freely. 


THE    FORMAL   SYSTEM    OF   EDUCATION        171 

sand  dollars,  despite  the  fact  that  the  candidate  was  ready 
to  take  the  salary.  The  reason  submitted  by  the  board  is 
always  this:  "They  cannot  live  decently  upon  the  money." 
Perhaps  not.  Perhaps  it  is  also  true  that  married  men  willing 
to  take  the  sum  are  inferior  in  ability  and  in  energy  to  un- 
married men  of  that  money-value.  I  have  an  opinion  that  for 
a  young  man  to  dare  risk  the  support  of  a  wife,  in  this  age, 
bears  testimony  either  to  uncommon  energy  or  to  uncommon 
folly;  and  am  willing  to  trust  to  professional  examination 
the  elimination  of  the  fools. 

To  the  establishment  of  a  formal  system  of  education, 
such  as  the  nation  needs,  the  first  essential  is  securing 
the  right  kind  of  educators,  both  men  and  women.  Hus- 
band and  grown  children  must  be  no  more  a  bar  than 
wife  and  children.  On  the  contrary,  they  should  consti- 
tute a  favorable  element  in  a  candidacy  for  appointment. 

To  this  proposition  there  will  be  several  objections.  To 
consider  them  with  the  utmost  brevity.  —  The  first  objection 
is  that  for  a  wife  and  mother  to  support  herself  and  to  help 
in  the  support  of  her  children  is  to  break  up  the  family.  His- 
torically and  logically,  this  is  arrant  nonsense.  Through  un- 
told ages  until  the  invention  of  machinery  and  business-based- 
on-money-exchange,  mothers  supported  their  children.  Do 
not  imagine  that  the  prolongation  of  infancy  that  made  man 
human  was  a  feat  performed  by  the  father  alone  or  by  the 
father  mainly.  It  was  the  victory  of  the  mother  over  a  lower 
animalism  that  she  first  outgrew,  teaching  the  father  by  her 
example.  Until  machinery  multiplied  goods  and  exchange 
transferred  them  with  extreme  ease,  mothers  were  as  essen- 
tial to  the  home  as  were  fathers :  they  cooked,  wove,  sewed, 
planted,  as  well  as  bore  the  babes  and  suckled  them.  Millions 
of  mothers  to-day  work  as  hard  as  do  the  fathers  to  feed  and 
clothe  the  children.  Several  millions  are  factory  operatives 
and  store  clerks,  bringing  home  their  wages  for  the  family 
use ;  and  trying  to  keep  house  by  evening,  Sunday,  and 
before-day-dawn  labor.  There  is  nothing  unwomanly,  nothing 


i;2  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

unmotherly,  nothing  unhistorical  in  the  support  of  children 
by  mothers.1 

Another  objection  is  that  women  teachers  who  are  also 
mothers  will  neglect  their  school  work  because  of  home  duties 
in  out-of-school  hours.  Unless  made  specific,  such  an  objec- 
tion does  not  sit  well  upon  the  lips  either  of  men,  who  are 
characteristically  less  conscientious  than  women  in  matters  of 
detail,  or  of  unmarried  women,  many  of  whom  are  very  pro- 
perly spending  their  evenings  and  holidays  in  companionship 
with  possible  husbands.  The  woman  teacher  who,  well  past 
thirty,  has  entirely  given  up  the  desire  or  the  fond  fear  of 
marriage  may  perhaps  safely  criticise  her  married  sister  who 
wishes  to  become  or  to  continue  a  teacher  ;  that  is,  she  may, 
unless,  as  is  very  often  the  case,  she  is  the  housekeeper  for 
invalid  parents  or  other  relatives  in  dependence  upon  her. 
One  specific  averment  does  lie  against  the  young  married 
woman  ;  but  when  we  all  come,  as  we  should,  to  the  view  that 
a  leave  of  absence  for  a  few  years  should  be  enforced  upon 
teachers  every  sabbatical  period  and  freely  granted  upon 
request  at  any  time,  we  shall  be  glad  to  see  the  happily  mar- 
ried woman  and  mother  in  our  schools.  The  notion  that  a 
teacher  must  teach  two  hundred  days  every  year  or  cease  to 
be  a  teacher  is  a  survival  of  the  time  when  teachers  were 
bondmen. 

Another  objection  supposed  to  lie  against  the  employment 
of  married  women  whose  husbands  are  living  is  that  their 
employment  displaces  unmarried  women.  This  objection  is 
not  valid  against  the  proposition  to  employ  only  the  married 
women  with  talent,  training,  and  successful  experience  before 
marriage.  We  are  certainly  not  supplied  in  America  with  a 
sufficient  number  of  good  teachers.  With  married  men  shut 
out  from  the  elementary  school-rooms  as  class  teachers  be- 
cause of  poor  salaries,  and  with  married  women,  however 
skillful,  shut  out  by  regulations  or  by  fixed  custom,  we  are 
forced  to  accept  as  teachers  many  young  girls  with  neither 
talent  nor  training  for  educational  duties.  There  are  300,000 
maiden  school  teachers  in  America ;  but  only  2,000,000  maids 

1  Oilman,  Human  Work  ;  also  various  poems. 


THE   FORMAL   SYSTEM    OF   EDUCATION        173 

above  twenty-one  years  of  age  in  all.  Not  one  woman  in 
seven  is  really  born  with  the  talents  and  the  disposition  for 
teaching.  In  our  country  now,  every  year  one  maid  in  five  of 
our  school  teachers  gives  up  teaching  for  marriage ;  and  some 
inexperienced  girl  five  years  younger  than  herself  takes  her 
place,  or  tries  to  take  it.  Against  a  double  injustice,  — to  the 
school  children  and  to  the  teacher,  —  I  raise  this  protest. 

All  other  objections  to  married  women  appear  frivolous  ; 
that  they  will  obey  their  husbands  rather  than  their  princi- 
pals ;  that  they  should  be  housekeepers  rather  than  teachers ; 
and  that  their  husbands  will  live  in  idleness  upon  their  earn- 
ings. The  answers  to  these  objections  are  too  obvious  for 
explanation ;  intelligent  American  women  are  no  longer 
"  obedient "  to  any  one,  but  faithful  in  a  larger  sense  than  en- 
slaved wives  could  ever  be ;  housekeeping  is  not  synonymous 
with  motherhood  or  homemaking;  and  the  kind  of  woman 
who  was  so  successful  in  teaching  before  marriage  that  her 
services  are  desired  after  marriage  seldom  chooses  a  loafer 
as  a  husband. 

To  found,  then,  a  formal  system  of  education,  competent  for 
its  purposes  in  a  democracy,  we  require  that  the  majority  of 
our  teachers  of  boys  and  girls  above  twelve  shall  be  husbands 
or  wives,  fathers  or  mothers,  and  that  some  of  our  teachers 
of  smaller  children  shall  be  parents.  In  the  college,  univer- 
sity, and  professional  school,  the  professors  are  men  of  family. 
Especially  in  the  high  school  do  we  need  to  follow  their  ex- 
ample. Fathers  and  mothers  of  grown  boys  and  girls  are 
none  too  experienced,  none  too  wise  to  manage  the  boys  and 
girls  of  other  parents.  A  high  school  of  a  thousand  students 
needs  a  faculty  of  forty  or  fifty  teachers,  ten  or  a  dozen 
fathers,  as  many  mothers,  and  a  minority  only  of  subordinate 
bachelors  and  maidens,  corresponding  to  the  youthful  tutors 
of  the  colleges  and  ushers  of  the  English  schools. 

A  young  woman  "studying  to  be  a  teacher"  should  be 
studying  as  much  for  her  life  work  as  she  who  is  studying 
law  or  medicine  or  theology,  or  any  young  man  who  is  study- 
ing for  any  profession.  This  is  the  sane  view.  Without  it, 
there  can  never  be  a  profession  of  education.  Without  it,  we 
can  never  make  a  profession  of  what,  to  a  majority  of  the 


174  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

practitioners,  is  now  merely  a  makeshift  until  marriage  or  other 
"good  fortune"  relieves  them  of  the  unhappy  "  necessity " 
to  teach. 

The  employment,  to  this  time  constantly  increasing  both 
absolutely  and  relatively,  of  young  women  and  of  unmarried 
women  as  teachers  was  originally  due  to  three  causes,  two 
meritorious  and  the  third  temporarily  necessary  but  now  dis- 
creditable. Of  these,  the  first  was  the  fact  that  with  rising 
standards  of  professional  preparation  for  teachers,  the  young 
women  just  out  of  school  were  actually  to  be  preferred  to 
older  men  and  women  not  equally  well  prepared.  Many  ex- 
perienced teachers,  male  and  female,  without  training,  were 
displaced  or  replaced  by  younger  but  better  equipped  women. 
The  second  was  the  fact,  already  presented,  that  woman  is 
often  peculiarly  fitted  by  age  and  disposition  to  teach  sympa- 
thetically the  children  from  four  to  ten  years  of  age.1  It  is 
still  true  and  is  likely  always  to  be  true  that  buoyant,  care- 
free girls  and  young  women  from  nineteen  to  twenty-five  or 
twenty-eight  years  of  age  make  particularly  good  kindergart- 
ners.  The  third  reason  was  the  institution  in  cities  of  com- 
pulsory education  :  this  forced  many  children  into  school, 
especially  children  from  eleven  to  fourteen  years  of  age. 
Consequently,  boards  of  education  found  it  necessary  to  em- 
ploy many  more  teachers  than  before.  The  most  available 
persons  to  be  secured  by  the  insufficient  funds  of  these  gov- 
erning boards  were  the  young  women  of  the  country  such 
as  before  1875  had  very  few  economic  opportunities.  Their 
labor  was  cheap  and  has  remained  cheap,  despite  the  won- 
derful improvement  in  its  quality.  Because  of  the  number  of 
such  teachers,  their  employment  became  a  "cult"  carefully 
fostered  by  thrifty  tax-payers.  A  century  ago  only,  of  the 
women,  "dames "and  "goodbodies,"  that  is,  mothers  and 
housewives,  were  ever  employed  as  teachers.  The  young 
girls  were  found  not  only  cheap  but  very  amenable  to  lay 
control  by  school  trustees  and  visitors.  The  "  cult "  throve 
until  it  has  become  almost  a  superstition.  But  in  this  age, 

1  Chamberlain,  The  Child  in  folk-thought,  p.  236 ;  Thompson,  Day 
Dreams  of  a  Schoolmaster,  p.  120. 


THE   FORMAL   SYSTEM    OF  EDUCATION        175 

when  the  School  is  being  restored  to  the  control  of  educators 
as  professional  superintendents,  principals,  and  supervisors, 
the  rights  of  the  child  to  education  by  the  best  teachers  are 
also  being  restored,  and  the  mothers  and  the  fathers  are 
coming  back  into  the  schools  as  teachers.  The  cult,  scarcely 
three  decades  in  duration,  will  soon  be  recognized  as  a  fad 
and  will  pass  into  history  as  a  curious  example  of  the  force 
of  temporary  economic  and  cultural  conditions. 

A  competent  profession  of  educators,  exercising  the 
authority  already  sufficiently  indicated,  supplied  with 
buildings,  apparatus,  and  salaries  worthy  of  the  cause, 
would  conduct  education  upon  lines  and  by  methods, 
devices,  and  materials  quite  beyond  the  imagination  of 
the  practical  worker  in  these  transition  days  when  uni- 
versal education  is  impoverished,  weak,  and  empirical. 
What  formal  system  it  would  establish  no  man  can  fore- 
see. And  yet  few  will  doubt  that  certain  features  would 
appear.  These  I  submit  one  by  one,  expecting  a  chal- 
lenge of  each,  and  knowing  that  I  cannot  be  right 
in  all. 

First :  The  period  of  education,  while  compulsory,  will 
be  arbitrary  not  as  to  age  but  as  to  attainment.  Every 
boy  and  every  girl  will  be  kept  at  school  until  adoles- 
cence has  passed  its  climax  and  character  and  intelli- 
gence have  been  well  established.  The  ideal  is  to  send 
out  each  graduate  literate,  efficient,  and  moral,  able  to 
understand  at  least  the  important  phases  of  neighboring 
society,  ready  to  do  something  worth  while,  and  strong 
not  only  to  resist  temptation,  but  also  to  help  others  in 
righteousness.  Every  depraved  and  vicious  boy  and  girl, 
man  and  woman,  —  by  whatever  name  they  may  be 
called,  by  whatever  immorality  he  or  she  may  take  a 
living  out  of  the  world,  and  whether  their  gambling  or 
drunkenness  or  tramping  or  promiscuity  or  other  crimi- 
nality be  a  survival  of  primitive  and  natural  conditions, 
which  the  good  have  overcome,  or  whether  these  ecstasies 


176  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

or  sorrows  be  perversions  due  to  a  multitudinous  human- 
ity, careless  of  its  degenerates,  —  is  evidence  that  edu- 
cation is  incomplete,  and  that  the  School  does  not  yet 
perform  its  perfect  work. 

Second :  The  materials  of  education  will  be  widely 
varied  to  meet  different  individuals  and  to  remedy  dif- 
ferent social  conditions.  All  the  elementary  work  will, 
however,  be  done  in  one  "common  school"  for  all  as 
now,  the  ideal  einheitsschule  of  the  German  Democrats, 
our  real  school  dedicated  to  equality  of  opportunity. 
Options  and  electives  must  be  multiplied,  and  "con- 
stants," though  maintained  in  definite  form,  must  be 
reduced  in  number.1  The  "bents,"  when  bad,  must  be 
made  straight ;  when  good,  must  be  followed.  Aptitudes 
and  interests  must  be  atrophied  when  dangerous  and 
nourished  when  profitable.  We  must  aim  at  breadth 
of  mind,  at  sincerity  of  heart,  and  at  strength  of  will. 
Ideals,  which  issue  from  knowledge  functioning  as  aims 
and  guides,  must  be  implanted  in  curiosity  by  teaching 
facts  upon  principle,  and  motives,  which  issue  from 
knowledge  functioning  as  impulses  and  desires,  must 
be  developed  in  feeling  by  action  likewise  upon  prin- 
ciple. 

Third :  Study,  recitation,  lecture,  and  exercises  must 
be  proportioned  not  only  to  the  various  grades  of  the 
School,  but  also  to  the  various  individuals.  The  desider- 
atum is  to  do  away  with  idleness  and  to  secure  in  every 
moment  work  or  whole-hearted  play  or  perfect  rest. 
Since  we  are  to  keep  the  boy  and  the  girl  at  school 
until  educated,  and  since  we  are  to  give  them  the  mate- 
rials needed  by  their  souls,  we  must  see  that  every 
moment  counts  for  growth. 

Fourth:  The  School  "as  good  as  the  people  want  "  is 
as  useless  as  the  Church  that  is  no  better  than  its 
attendants  and  neighbors.  The  School  must  be  rescued 

1  Harris,  Educational  Values,  Report,  1893-94,  p.  617. 


THE   FORMAL   SYSTEM   OF   EDUCATION        177 

from  mediocrity  and  supineness  and  sordidness.  It  must 
be  made  so  good  as  to  be  a  happy  memory  and  a  con- 
stant inspiration  when  school  days  are  over.  Knowing 
the  schools  of  the  people  as  they  are,  I  marvel  that  the 
people  are  as  intelligent  and  as  good  as  they  are. 
The  kindness  overflowing  from  strength  that  is  anxious 
to  be  of  service;  the  love  of  truth  that  characterizes  men 
and  women  of  free  nobility,  the  sense  of  beauty  potent 
in  the  souls  that  mean  to  bring  ideals  to  reality  and  to 
harmonize  art  and  fact,  and  the  wealth  that  God  and  in- 
vention have  now  made  possible  everywhere  in  this  land, 
must  transform  the  actual  School  of  the  present  into  the 
enlarged,  enkindled,  enriched,  and  ennobled  School  of 
the  future,  to  the  end  that  as  many  as  possible  (not 
merely  the  survivors  of  a  narrow  formalism)  shall  be 
saved  for  themselves  and  for  this  nation.  The  vicious 
do  not  desire  such  a  School,  nor  do  the  avaricious,  the 
tyrannical,  or  the  slothful;  for  vice  feeds  on  ignorance 
and  begets  it,  and  avarice  thinks  to  grow  rich  upon  the 
forced  labor  of  the  starveling,  tyranny  fears  the  intelli- 
gent, and  sloth  is  scornful  of  the  diligent.  The  School 
must  not  reflect  civilization  as  it  is,  but  must  image  the 
civilization  that  may  come  to  pass.  The  formalism  of 
these  times,  which  hides  its  shallowness  and  insufficiency 
behind  programmes,  courses,  reports,  regulations,  and  rou- 
tine drudgery,  must  give  way  to  life,  to  the  informal  that 
is  spiritual.  And  the  life  will  justify  itself,  as  it  has  in 
all  ages  of  the  past,  by  creating  new  and  larger  forms 
and  modes  for  the  larger  spirit  that  is  ever  flowing  into 
the  soul  of  man.  The  new  School  will  be  a  relation 
between  teacher  and  learner:  all  the  rest  will  be  inci- 
dental. As  Confucius  said,  "Better  a  conversation  with 
a  wise  man  than  five  years  of  the  study  of  books."  The 
School  must  be  for  every  pupil  a  walk  and  conversation 
with  wise  men,  such  as  use  forms  and  modes  not  as  ends 
but  as  means.  The  real  product  of  the  good  School  is 


i;8  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

not  high  marks,  fine  compositions,  beautiful  drawings,  the 
Latin  essay,  a  steam-engine,  but  youth  who  love  the  light 
and  are  strong  for  service. 

Fifth  :  Studies  and  exercises  of  every  description  will 
be  evaluated  with  reference  to  the  pupils  and  graded 
according  to  their  needs.  The  boy  will  not  study  all 
American  history  consecutively  when  fifteen  years  of 
age  because  "  he  will  soon  leave  school,"  nor  will  the 
girl  study  "  Evangeline "  because  "  every  American 
should  know  something  of  Longfellow."  The  location 
of  studies  and  exercises  will  be  determined  solely  in  the 
interest  of  the  pupil,  for  the  purpose  of  the  School  is  to 
furnish  forth  into  life  the  best  possible  man  or  woman. 
By  assuming  this  sovereignty,  the  School  renounces  all 
obligations  of  service  to  Church,  to  State,  to  Business,  to 
Art,  and  to  Culture.  It  teaches  nothing  upon  dictation  ; 
and  the  sole  utilitarianism  that  it  knows  is  the  utilita- 
rianism of  providing  for  Society  capable,  righteous,  and 
learned  men  and  women.  On  the  other  hand,  and  indeed 
as  a  consequence  of  this  position,  the  School  will  utilize, 
as  never  before,  all  knowledge  and  art  in  the  preparation 
of  men  and  women  ;  and  it  will  serve,  therefore,  as  never 
before,  Society  and  all  its  institutions.  Of  course,  when 
the  School  aims  to  send  out  completely  educated  young 
men  and  women,  the  man  who  is  only  a  business  man 
will  deplore  the  rising  wages  and  the  insufficiency  of 
cheap  help,  he  who  is  only  a  politician  will  resent  the 
activity  of  independents,  he  who  is  only  a  clergyman 
will  mourn  the  prevalence  of  free  thinkers,  and  he  who 
"  wants  a  submissive  wife  "  or  some  other  woman  victim 
of  "man's  superiority"  will  want  her  forever,  since  none 
will  be  ready  for  the  sacrifice.  For  when  the  School  is 
strong  and  bold  enough  to  evaluate  and  locate  studies 
and  exercises  as  the  School  chooses,  we  shall  find  many 
omissions  and  additions  and  changes  in  its  management, 
curricula,  and  results  ;  and  its  courses  will  display  a 


THE   FORMAL   SYSTEM   OF   EDUCATION        179 

simplicity  as  gratifying  to  intelligent  critics  as  it  will  be 
delightful  to  the  pupils. 

Sixth :  The  School  will  increase  not  only  in  number 
of  subjects  and  exercises  but  in  complexity  of  organiza- 
tion and  in  the  variety  of  particular  schools.  We  need 
schools  for  children  under  seven,  schools  for  children 
from  eight  to  twelve,  schools  for  boys  and  girls  from 
thirteen  to  sixteen,  and  schools  for  youth  from  seven- 
teen to  twenty.  Each  school  requires  a  special  kind  of 
faculty  and  a  peculiar  kind  of  management,  because 
each  offers  a  characteristic  problem.  Whether  two  con- 
secutive schools  are  under  one  roof  is  not  very  import- 
ant, but  they  must  have  different  teachers  and  different 
organization  and  administration. 

This  School  of  the  future  is  forever  coming  to  pass. 
Evidences  of  increasing  independence,  of  growing  know- 
ledge, of  new,  higher,  and  larger  ideals,  while  not  on 
every  hand,  outweigh  and  outnimber  all  evidences  to 
the  contrary. 


CHAPTER   X 

LEGISLATION,    ADMINISTRATION,    SUPERVISION,    AND 
INSTRUCTION    AS    EDUCATIONAL    INSTRUMENTS 

For  the  letter  killeth,  but  the  spirit  maketh  alive.  —  Paul,  2  Corinthians  iii,  6. 

In  all  things,  Government  and  cooperation  are  the  Laws  of  Life ;  Anarchy  and  compe- 
tition, the  Laws  of  Death  .  .  .  Laws  are  the  definitions  and  bonds  of  custom,  or  of  what 
the  Nation  desires  should  become  custom.  Archie  law  directs  what  is  or  is  not  to  be  dotie  ; 
meristic  law  prescribes  what  is  or  is  not  to  be  possessed ;  and  critic  law  defines  what  is  or 
is  not  to  be  suffered.  .  .  .  All  forms  of  government  are  good  just  so  far  as  they  attain 
this  one  vital  necessity  of  policy  —  that  the  wise  and  kind,  few  or  many,  shall  govern 
tlu  unwise  and  unkind  —  RUSKIN,  Munera  Pulveris,  chapters  v-vi. 

What  limit  can  be  placed  to  this  power  of  producing  variations  of  organ  and  of  func- 
tion, reciprocally  determined  and  interdependent,  which  acts  through  long  ages  and  rigidly 
scrutinizes  the  whole  constitution,  structure,  and  habits  of  each  creature,  favoring  the 
good  and  rejecting  the  bad?  I  can  see  no  limit  to  this  power,  in  slowly  and  beautifully 
adapting  each  form  to  the  most  complex  relations  of  life.  —  DARWIN,  Origin  of  Species, 
final  chapter. 

IN  the  evolution  of  human  society,  there  has  been  dis- 
covered a  wonderful  machine  by  which  progress  may  be 
intentionally  produced  by  majority  agreement,  so  that 
we  need  no  longer  to  depend  upon  accidental  collisions 
of  persons  and  of  groups,  but  in  peaceful  and  orderly 
fashion  may  resolve  upon  and  adopt  our  line  of  march. 
This  wonderful  machine  has  been  the  theme  of  many 
writers  *  and  the  resource  of  all  modern  progressives.  It 
is  the  legislature  of  the  delegates  of  the  people  operat- 
ing the  republic  as  a  representative  democracy. 

Neither  state  nor  government,  neither  legislature  nor 
democracy,  is  the  simple  affair  that  it  appears  to  be.  Each 
indeed  is  so  complicated  as  almost  to  defy  analysis,  history, 
and  description.  There  is  as  yet  no  complete  science  of  hu- 
man nature,  though  this  science  has  its  beginnings  in  psy- 

1  "The  legislator  is  essentially  an  inventor  and  a  scientific  discoverer." 
Ward,  Psychic  Factors  in  Civilization,  p.  309. 


EDUCATIONAL    INSTRUMENTS  181 

chology.  And  there  can  be  no  complete  science  of  democracy 
until  there  is  a  clear  science  of  society :  that  is,  we  cannot 
know  the  people  until  we  know  both  the  political  man  and  the 
private  man,  the  latter  of  whom  the  Greeks  called  "  idiot." 
Man  in  democracy  is  in  the  position  of  the  prospector  who 
has  found  gold  but  who  must  yet  dig  the  mine  to  get  the 
ore  out. 

The  first,  fundamental,  distinctive,  and  characteristic 
legislature  of  a  great  democratic  people,  conscious  of  its 
power  and  hopeful  of  its  destiny,  is  the  convention  to  form 
the  constitution,  which  is  to  be  its  basic  law.  This  legisla- 
ture meets  occasionally.1  Its  every  convention  is  a  crisis 
in  the  history  of  the  people.  Once  inaugurated,  only  the 
power  of  a  military  genius  can  prevent  or  overthrow  it. 
At  some  point,  every  government  depends  upon  auto- 
cratic will,  —  personal,  oligarchic,  aristocratic,  demo- 
cratic. The  constitutional  convention,  whether  or  not  it 
submits  its  decisions  to  the  approval  of  other  political 
bodies,  expresses  the  will  of  democracy.  The  constitu- 
tional convention  of  our  Nation  was  more  genuinely  demo- 
cratic than  that  of  any  State  save  four,  for  its  conclusion 
permits  men  and  women  alike  to  vote.  In  forty-one 
States,  we  are  still  governed  by  a  political  aristocracy  of 
adult  males. 

The  American  constitutions,  National  and  State,  create 
the  conditions  of  all  the  social  institutions, —  Religion, 
Government,  Family,  Property,  Education,  Culture,  War, 
Business. 

In  the  State  of  New  Jersey,  by  virtue  of  the  Constitution 
and  of  Acts  of  the  Legislature,  designed  to  make  its  provisions 
effective,  the  differentiation  of  the  School  from  the  State  has 

1  If  the  American  Constitution  of  1787  had  provided  for  a  convention 
every  forty  or  fifty  years,  probably  there  never  would  have  been  a  War  of 
Secession.  Such  a  recurrent  constitutional  convention  might  be  composed 
of  two  houses,  one  to  consist  of  all  living  ex-Governors  of  States  and  the 
other  of  all  living  ex-Senators,  ex-Presidents,  and  the  Supreme  Court 
Justices. 


182  THE  MACHINERY   OF    EDUCATION 

proceeded  so  far  as  to  suggest  the  independent  integration 
of  the  former.  The  State  School  Superintendent  is  a  court  of 
special  and  superior  jurisdiction  in  all  legal  matters  of  public 
education,  and  appeals  go  from  him  to  the  State  Board  of 
Education.  The  State  courts  cannot  interfere  with  any  exec- 
utive orders  or  legal  interpretations  issuing  from  City,  County, 
and  State  Superintendents,  or  from  the  various  municipal 
boards  of  education  or  the  State  Board,  save  that  the  Supreme 
Court  may  determine  the  constitutionality  of  a  particular 
law.  As  a  matter  of  custom,  the  State  Legislature  passes, 
with  little  or  no  change,  the  bills  proposed  by  the  State 
Board  of  Education.  Every  municipality  is  a  school  district, 
constituting  a  corporation  separate  from  the  ordinary  city 
corporation.  Municipal  school  officers  are  in  no  sense  town 
or  city  officers,  and  are,  therefore,  independent  of  mayors, 
councils,  and  all  other  boards.1  The  State  pays  more  than 
half  of  all  local  school  expenditures,  save  those  for  buildings. 
The  differentiation  is  not  complete,  because  the  laws  for 
the  School  are  made  by  the  State  Legislature,  not  by  the 
State  Board  of  Education,  though  indeed  many  minor  rules 
and  regulations  are  made  by  the  latter  body.  All  taxes  are 
provided  for,  though  not  entirely  determined  in  amount,  by 
the  State  Legislature.  A  considerable  degree  of  autonomy 
is  vested  in  local  boards  of  education  as  to  rules  and  regula- 
tions. The  State  Superintendent  of  Public  Instruction,  how- 
ever, is  nominated  by  the  Governor,  and  confirmed  by  the 
Senate  of  the  State  Legislature.  Since  he  must  hold  a  State 
certificate  to  teach,  he  belongs  educationally  to  the  School, 
though  politically  to  the  State. 

The  legislation  for  the  School  begins  with  the  Consti- 
tutional Convention,  proceeds  through  the  Legislature, 
the  State  Board  of  Education,  if  any,  and  the  County 
Board  of  Education,  if  any,  and  ends  with  the  Munici- 
pal Board  of  Education.  This  legislation  is  of  exceed- 
ing importance,  especially  that  by  the  first  three  bodies. 
Here  many  vital  questions  are  settled,  if  not  answered. 

1  Chancellor,  Our  Schools,  note,  p.  41. 


EDUCATIONAL   INSTRUMENTS  183 

It  is  legislation  usually  by  men  not  only  incompetent,  but 
also  indifferent.  Many  State  and  municipal  legislators 
are  disloyal  to  the  public  welfare,  and  a  few  are  malicious. 

1.  Legislation  that  makes  education  compulsory  from  six 
to  twelve  years  of  age  betrays  education,  because  these  are 
not  the  most  important  years  for  education. 

2.  Legislation  that  makes  education  compulsory  only  in 
name,  but  provides  all  manner  of  ways  of  escape  and  fails 
to  provide  economic  support  for  the  children  of  dire  poverty, 
is  false  to  democracy. 

3.  Legislation  that  provides  fine  and  broad  curricula  with 
or  without  ample  and  appropriate  buildings  and  apparatus, 
but  fails  to  provide  a  sufficient  number  of  happily  circum- 
stanced and  efficient  teachers,  is  incompetent. 

4.  Legislation  that  lays  heavy  burdens  upon  teachers,  but 
provides  for  them  only  ignorant,  disloyal,  and  dishonest  con- 
trollers, as  municipal  board  members,  is  malicious. 

5.  Legislation  that  by  authorizing  rigid  contracts  without 
release  clauses,  by  forbidding  married  teachers  to  teach,  and 
by  similar  restrictions  of   personal   liberty,  degrades   what 
should  be  a  profession  into  State  helotage,  is  subversive  of 
civilization. 

6.  Legislation  that  creates  such  an  office  as  that  of  super- 
intendent without  prescribing  the  highest  professional  quali- 
fications and  assigning  rights,  privileges,  and  responsibilities, 
is  such  a  mockery  of  education  as  grieves  and  alarms  the 
intelligent  patriot. 

7.  Legislation  that  promotes  or  even  permits  unsanitary, 
unhygienic  school  buildings,  grounds,  courses,  exercises,  pro- 
grammes, or  rules  and  regulations,  and  fails  to  make  health 
the  beginning  and  the  end  of  education,  is  the  modern  offer- 
ing up  of  the  seed  of  mankind  to  Moloch. 

All  the  possibilities  of  the  improvement  of  education 
begin  with  legislation,  for  the  constitutional  convention 
of  democracy  is  omnipotent.  Private  education,  paro- 
chial education,  and  endowed  education,  as  well  as  free 
common  education,  may  well  be  improved  by  legislation. 


1 84  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION      * 

As  a  stream  cannot  rise  higher  than  its  source,  so  educa- 
tion cannot  rise  higher  than  the  legislation  that  initiates 
it.  Law  is  the  die  by  which  all  schooling  must  be  cut. 
The  trunk  of  a  tree  tapers  from  its  roots  up. 

Briefly,  so  much  as  to  legislation  as  an  educational 
instrument.  Second  in  importance  is  administration. 
The  laws  may  be  very  good,  but  when  badly  executed 
or  not  executed  at  all,  the  educational  conditions  must  be 
very  bad.  Under  the  same  State  laws,  even  under  simi- 
lar municipal  regulations,  one  city  may  have  excellent 
schools  and  another  criminally  poor  schools.  I  mean 
criminally  in  the  literal  sense,  that  is,  schools  so  poor  as 
to  defy  the  laws  and  to  render  their  administrators  liable 
to  indictment  and  to  conviction.  With  really  bad  laws, 
it  is  not  possible  to  have  good  schools. 

In  order  to  have  a  good  administration  of  good  laws, 
it  is  necessary  to  have  a  good  system  and  competent, 
efficient,  and  righteous  administrative  officers.  The  State 
laws  limit  but  slightly  the  administration  of  private,  en- 
dowed, and  parochial  schools.  The  noteworthy  peculi- 
arity of  American  State  legislation  is  that  it  leaves  the 
private  school  free  to  do  almost  anything  that  its  admin- 
istrators choose.  While  creating  the  vast  public  school 
system,  it  permits,  one  may  even  say  encourages,  the 
supplementing  of  this  system  by  the  establishment  and 
conduct  of  other  schools.  In  many  States,  so  numerous 
and  so  correlated  are  the  Catholic  parochial  schools  that 
they  constitute  a  system  rivaling  that  of  the  State 
schools.  The  prevalence  of  private,  endowed,  and  Epis- 
copal, Catholic,  Lutheran,  and  other  parochial  schools 
has  alarmed  some  publicists,  sociologists,  and  others  to 
such  an  extent  that  they  have  proposed  various  inter- 
ferences with  their  freedom  in  isolation  from  State 
control. 

Among  these  interferences,  accomplished  in  some 
States  or  at  least  proposed,  are  these  :  — 


EDUCATIONAL   INSTRUMENTS  185 

1.  To  require  the  employment  only  of  properly  qualified 
teachers,  whose  proficiency  shall  be  known,  perhaps  even 
determined,  by  State  educational  inspectors.1 

2.  To  enforce  the  compulsory  attendance  of  boys  and  girls 
of  so-called  "  school  age  "  by  the  visitation  of  attendance 
("  truant ")  officers  in  private  as  well  as  in  public  schools. 

3.  To  require  instruction  in  certain  subjects,  such  as  read- 
ing, writing,  arithmetic,   hygiene,  American  history,  by  the 
inspection  of  State  educational  officers. 

4.  To  enforce  laws  relating  to  ventilation,  sanitation,  hy- 
giene, lighting,  seating  capacity,  per  capita  of  pupils  to  the 
teacher,  gradation,  graduation,  and  similar  matters. 

5.  To  permit  the  transfer  of  pupils  to  and  from  public 
schools  only  upon  rules  and  by  examinations  of  the  State 
teachers. 

6.  To  apportion  State  public  funds  to  such   private,  en- 
dowed, or  parochial  schools  as  fully  conform  to  State  laws 
and  regulations,  and  to  close  up  others. 

The  State  seriously  questions  the  right  of  parents 
to  place  their  children  in  schools  of  inferior  quality,  or 
of  teachers  to  control  and  instruct  them  there.  By  the 
democratic  State,  we  all  live  and  die.  By  the  quality  of 
its  people,  it  lives  or  dies,  —  whence  proceeds  the  right 
of  the  democratic  State  to  do  what  it  will  with  its  own. 
This  is  not  mere  theory.  As  matter  of  fact,  the  despotic, 
omnipotent,  modern  democratic  State  actually  before 
our  own  eyes  is  doing  what  it  will  with  our  children,  whom, 
be  it  known,  plainly  and  to  our  sorrow,  it  often  chooses 
to  treat  cheaply  and  meanly.2 

In  most  States,  the  public  schools  constitute  a  sys- 
tem centralized  in  form,  if  not  in  fact,  about  a  State 
Superintendent  of  Public  Instruction  and  a  State  Board 
of  Education.  This  officer  and  this  board  have  more  or 

1  Cf.  Constitution  of  Texas  and  Statutes  of  Massachusetts. 

2  The  plans  and  methods  of  good  administration  in  private  schools  are 
too  various  and  too  complex  to  be  discussed  in  these  pages.   Our  main 
concern  is  with  the  public  schools. 


186  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

less  executive  control  and  legislative  jurisdiction  over 
the  district  schools.  The  State  control  of  the  schools  in 
districts  of  the  cities  and  towns  is  usually  much  less  than 
that  of  the  schools  in  the  districts  of  the  villages  and 
strictly  rural  neighborhoods.  In  some  States,  the  cities 
and  towns  possess  charters,  giving  them  distinctive  rights 
and  privileges,  and  isolating  them  from  the  general  State 
system.  Such  charters  in  this  age  are  survivals  of  elder 
ages  when  universities,  guilds,  and  other  societies,  cor- 
porations, and  institutions  secured  liberties  by  grants 
from  imperial  sovereigns  or  from  feudal  lords. 

In  general,  through  the  State  School  system,  State 
and  School  are  paralleled  and  demarked  by  a  political 
board  of  education  and  an  educational  hierarchical  officer 
known  as  State,  County,  City,  or  Town  superintendent 
or  Village  or  Township  principal.  This  paralleling  of 
State  and  School  indicates  the  differentiation  of  the 
School  from  the  State  and  its  integration  as  an  equal 
social  institution.  Of  course,  it  may  be  argued,  as  indeed 
it  often  has  been,  that  the  State  adopted  the  ancient 
School  and  is  transforming  it  in  character.  Or  it  may 
be  argued  that  the  schools,  many  and  various,  seeking 
homogeneousness  and  integrity,  seized  upon  the  State 
for  support  and  have  become  a  great  social  institution, 
essentially  and  unfortunately,  perhaps  irredeemably,  para- 
sitic. But  the  truth  appears  to  be  that  the  democratic 
State,  seeking  evolution  into  competent  and  just  govern- 
ment, calculated  to  advance  the  welfare  of  mankind,  dis- 
covered in  the  ancient  schools  an  invaluable  idea,  that  of 
the  probability  of  education  from  the  right  formal  disci- 
pline and  instruction.  Democracy  then  saw  what  was 
never  before  known  in  the  world  save  by  men  of  genius, 
—  that  education  is  the  mode,  the  only  mode,  of  continu- 
ous progress.  Democracy  saw  in  education  part  of  the 
cause  and  all  of  the  cure  of  civilization ;  saw,  that  is  to 
say,  that  government  of  the  people,  by  the  people,  for 


EDUCATIONAL   INSTRUMENTS  187 

the  people  can  and  will  produce  a  happy  civilization  by 
means  of  true  education  and  by  no  other  means  whatso- 
ever. In  this  view,  then,  the  School  is  as  much  the  pro- 
duct of  the  democratic  spirit  as  the  State  itself  is.  The 
history  of  education  shows  that  since  democracy  took 
possession  of  the  School,  it  has  been  born  again,  born 
into  a  larger  life. 

The  business  of  the  local  board  of  education  is  four- 
fold.1 It  must  raise  in  whole  or  in  part  the  funds  for 
buildings  and  maintenance  by  appeal  either  to  town 
meeting  or  to  city  council  or  by  direct  levy  upon  pro- 
perty ;  sometimes  it  has  very  great,  sometimes  very 
limited,  powers  in  respect  to  securing  funds.  It  must  ex- 
pend such  funds  as  it  gets  for  permanent  improvements 
or  for  current  expenses.  It  must  secure  teachers,  jani- 
tors, and  other  employees  to  operate  its  plant.  And  it 
must  govern  the  schools.  At  a  thousand  points  in  this 
business,  the  local  board  may  fall  below  the  ideal  of  edu- 
cation as  expressed  in  the  State  laws. 

This  local  board  is  legislative,  administrative,  and  judi- 
cial. It  legislates  when  it  prescribes  rules  and  regulations 
to  carry  out  State  laws.  It  administers  when  it  purchases 
sites  and  erects  buildings.  Through  the  teachers  em- 
ployed, the  board  administers  theoretically  at  least,  often 
really,  even  the  education  itself.  It  is  judicial  in  that  it 
decides  all  appeals  from  the  actions  of  its  appointees  and 
employees. 

The  local  superintendent  is  also  an  administrative,  a 
legislative,  and  a  judicial  officer.  Unless  he  has  rights 
derived  from  qualifications  prescribed  by  the  laws  of  the 
State  Legislature  or  from  the  rules  and  regulations  of 
the  State  or  County  Board  of  Education,  he  is  almost 
wholly  subordinate  to  the  municipal  board  of  education. 

1  Where  the  board  is  merely  tenant  in  buildings  held  by  other 
boards,  there  the  board  of  education  is  an  intermediary  for  the  School 
to  the  State. 


i88  THE    MACHINERY    OF   EDUCATION 

He  has,  of  course,  the  contractual  and  personal  rights 
guaranteed  by  National  and  State  Constitutions  and  a 
certain  measure  of  rights  due  to  public  opinion,  which 
fortunately,  because  it  holds  him  rather  than  the  board 
of  education  responsible  for  actual  school  conditions,  is 
very  apt  to  support  him  in  controversies  with  that 
board. 

In  a  city  school  system,  there  are  usually  from  six  to  ten 
grades  or  ranks  of  the  teaching  force  :  first,  the  superintend- 
ent ;  second,  the  associate,  assistant,  or  deputy  superintend- 
ents ;  third,  the  general  supervisors  of  special  subjects,  courses, 
or  grades ;  fourth,  the  division  or  district  superintendents ; 
fifth,  the  principals  of  schools  with  or  without  annexes  or 
branches,  the  high  school  principals  outranking  but  not  con- 
trolling the  grammar  (full  elementary)  school  principals,  and 
these  outranking  and  sometimes  controlling  the  intermediate 
and  primary  school  principals  ;  sixth,  the  vice  or  assistant 
principals,  if  any ;  seventh,  the  heads  of  departments  within 
the  schools,  if  any;  eighth,  first  assistants;  ninth,  directors 
with  one  or  more  subordinates  ;  and  tenth,  the  class  teachers, 
permanent,  temporary,  and  substitute. 

Such  a  system  is  essentially  either  hierarchical  or  feudal. 
Many  varieties  and  forms  are  in  actual  existence  or  have 
been  proposed.  Sometimes  the  teachers  have  almost  abso- 
lutely permanent  tenure:  their  class-rooms  are  allodial  posses- 
sions. Sometimes  the  system  is  a  torso,  with  a  superintendent 
in  name  but  not  in  fact.  Sometimes  the  reverse  is  true,  when 
the  board  delegates  to  him  all  its  powers,  and  he  employs, 
discharges,  transfers,  elevates,  and  reduces  all  subordinates 
almost  at  his  will. 

State  and  County  systems  vary  in  organization  and 
in  administration  so  radically  as  not  to  permit  a  brief 
summary  of  fact.  The  principles  in  issue  may,  however, 
be  discussed  and  evaluated.  Over  against  State  central- 
ization stands  local  autonomy.  Whatever  may  be  our 
opinion  as  to  which  should  prevail,  we  must  agree  that 
from  Massachusetts  to  California  the  tendency  in  every 


1 89 

State,  with  no  demonstrable  exception,  is  toward  greater 
control  by  the  State  and  away  from  that  by  the  munici- 
pality. Very  complicated  municipal  systems  of  education 
sometimes  result.  On  the  side  of  the  State,  there  may 
be  State  legislature  and  courts,  county  board  of  free- 
holders and  courts,  and  municipal  council,  mayor,  judges, 
and  others  in  partial  control ;  and  on  the  side  of  the 
School,  State  board  of  education,  State  superintendent 
and  staff,  county  board  of  education  and  superintendent, 
and  municipal  board  of  education  and  superintendent. 

State  centralization  seems  to  develop  such  advantages  as 
these :  — 

1.  Assurance  of  local  schools  everywhere,  reaching  at  least 
a  minimum  efficiency  and  maintained  for  at  least  a  minimum 
term. 

2.  Assurance  of  at  least  a  minimum  education  for  every 
child. 

3.  Effective  encouragement  of  progress  and  condemnation 
of  retrogression  in  the  weaker  and  more  ignorant  commu- 
nities. 

4.  Such  a  measure*  of  general  uniformity  as  in  our  mobile 
population  permits  the  pupil  to  go  freely  from  a  school  in 
one  community  of  the  State  to  another,  and  facilitates  his 
transfer  outside  of  the  State  to  a  school  elsewhere. 

5.  Establishment  of  a  central  office  of  education  on  guard 
at  the  State  Capitol  where  sits  the  legislature  with  its  vast 
powers  over  education,  public  and  private. 

Local   autonomy  seems  to  develop  certain   other   advan- 
tages :  — 

1.  Encouragement  of  the  immediate  personal  interest  and 
concern  of  parents  and  of  other  citizens  in  the  education  of 
the  individual  pupil. 

2.  Incitement  of  effort  in  those  educational  activities  which 
are  represented  by  parents'  organizations,  free  evening  and 
holiday  lectures,  artistic  buildings  and  grounds,  kindergar- 
tens, and  physical  training  of  one  kind  and  another. 

3.  Appeals  to  various  degrees  of  local  pride  :  (a)  excelling 


190  THE   MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

every  other  community ;  (b)  equaling  the  best  communities 
elsewhere ;  (c)  reaching  at  least  the  average.1 

From  the  extreme  local  freedom  of  Pennsylvania  to 
the  extreme  centralization  of  Louisiana  is  a  long  dis- 
tance ;  but  recent  developments  in  States  as  far  apart  as 
New  York  and  California  seem  to  indicate  a  national 
conviction  that  the  safety  of  democracy  rests  wholly 
upon  education,  and  that  this  is  too  important  to  be 
intrusted  to  municipalities.  Indeed,  the  conviction  is 
spreading  that  the  Nation  itself  should  organize  a  cen- 
tral office  of  education  and  build  up  a  School  system  as 
wide  as  its  own  boundaries.2  Otherwise,  the  contrasts 
between  the  States  in  respect  to  intelligence,  efficiency, 
and  morality  may  become  so  great  as  to  be  a  cause 
of  sectional  separations  and  antipathies.  In  particular, 
the  establishment  of  great  national  universities,  in  the 
several  regions  of  the  country,  with  picked  students  on 
salaries  and  pledged  to  enter  the  government  service  as 
consuls,  teachers,3  clerks,  scientists,  after  graduation,  is 
advocated  as  a  practical  necessity.  Similarly,  to  prevent 
the  child-illiteracy  and  the  child-slaughter  due  to  child- 
labor  carelessly  or  callously  permitted  in  certain  States, 
to  insure  the  industrial  training  of  all  citizens,  whatever 
their  nationality,  race,  religion,  or  color,  to  encourage 
proficiency  in  the  sciences  and  the  arts,  —  metallurgy, 
forestry,  engineering,  agriculture,  and  all  other  useful  oc- 
cupations requiring  skill,  —  and  to  diffuse  generally  a 
knowledge  of  the  principles  of  morality  in  the  common 
and  the  uncommon  affairs  and  relations  of  life,  national 
regulation  and  subsidizing  of  State  school  systems  are 

1  Dutton,  Social  Phases  of  Education. 

J  Ashby,  Address,  Department  of  Superintendence,  Proceedings  Na- 
tional Educational  Association,  Chicago,  February,  1907. 

8  To  secure  national  appropriations  for  normal  schools  is  the  purpose 
of  an  important  educational  association,  with  members  in  all  parts  of  the 
land. 


EDUCATIONAL   INSTRUMENTS  191 

urgently  advocated.  Of  course,  such  a  national  system 
should  be  operated  not  by  Congress,  the  national  legisla- 
ture controlling  the  national  "  State,"  but  by  a  national 
board  of  education  to  be  provided  by  the  national  con- 
stitution and  to  control  the  national  "  School."  Unde- 
sirable, even  disagreeable  as  such  a  development  may 
seem  to  many,  it  appears  to  lie  in  the  natural  and,  there- 
fore, the  inevitable  course  of  events  in  a  democracy,  which 
is  government  according  to  human  nature.1 

Less  important  than  school  legislation,  school  administra- 
tion nevertheless  may  ruin  the  best  plans  for  education. 

1.  Administration  that  nullifies  good  legislation  by  employ- 
ing too  few  agents  or  incompetent  ones  is  treachery  to  child- 
hood. 

2.  Administration  that  improperly  evaluates  the  three  abso- 
lute essentials  of  education,  — teachers,  apparatus,  and  build- 
ings,—  in  the  degree  of  its  errors,  retards  or  reverses  the 
movement  of  society. 

There  are  two  aspects  of  this  matter  greatly  misunderstood. 
In  terms  of  the  present  economic  regime,  buildings  and 
teachers  are  not  commensurable.  A  complete  thirty-room  ele- 
mentary schoolhouse  costs,  let  us  say,  $250,000  to  build  and 
to  equip  properly  and  adequately,  and  requires  forty-five 
teachers  for  its  thousand  pupils.  The  teachers  should  receive 
$100,000  annually.  In  most  cities,  a  building  of  such  a  size 
would  cost  only  $125,000  to  build,  and  the  money  would  be 
raised  by  an  issue  of  four  per  cent  thirty-year  bonds.  The 
building  would  be  nearly  worthless  in  thirty  years  unless 
repaired  and  renewed  at  a  total  cost,  let  us  say,  of  $60,000. 
In  thirty  years,  we  have,  therefore,  a  total  cost  of  $335,000 
for  the  building;  that  is,  $11,167  annually.  Of  this  amount, 
the  $150,000  paid  in  interest  was  a  concession  to  the  spirit 
of  the  regime  which  desires  to  build  up  a  class  of  money- 
lords  ;  therefore,  instead  of  paying  as  we  go,  we  seize  every 

1  A  similar  argument  may  be  made  for  church  and  religion.  This  is,  in 
no  sense,  a  revival  of  the  State-Church,  but  the  exact  contrary, —  a 
church  as  wide  as  the  State,  but  absolutely  free  from  it.  The  extension  of 
the  principle  to  Business  is  obvious. 


192  THE   MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

opportunity  to  postpone  payment  and  to  pay  later  in  full  with 
interest  added.  Besides  the  $11,167  annually  for  the  build- 
ing, we  have  been  paying  in  cash,  not  by  loan-proceeds,  per- 
haps $20,000  annually  for  thirty-two  or  thirty-three  teachers, 
and  $2500  to  $3000  for  apparatus,  books,  stationery,  and 
supplies.1 

The  other  aspect  of  this  matter  is  that  unless  the  teachers 
are  sufficiently  numerous,  competent,  and  industrious,  —  in 
other  words,  unless  they  have  been  selected  with  sufficient 
intelligence  and  conscientiousness  and  receive  high  enough 
salaries  to  command  genuine  talent,  —  from  mere  weight  of 
the  barbarism  and  ignorance  congenital  in  each  generation, 
the  civilization  in  that  particular  community  will  relapse  into 
a  lower  form. 

3.  Administration  that  employs  its  resources  and  agencies 
unwisely,  whether  by  ill-directed  or  misdirected  rules  and 
regulations,  or  by  unintelligent  methods  of  enforcement  or  of 
execution,  or  by  incompetent  selection  of  subordinates,  is  sin- 
ful, if  not  also  criminal.    For  the  incompetent  to  secure  or  to 
accept  office  beyond  their  powers,  while  frequent  enough,  is 
none  the  less  wicked,  because  the  progress  of  society  is  at 
stake. 

4.  Administration  that  fears  to  advise  any  legislation  or 
advises  legislation  unwisely  is  guilty  of  a  social  offense  whose 
very  magnitude  saves  it  from  the  condemnation  deserved. 

In  American  education,  administration  is  the  weakest 
and  worst  spot.  The  best  administration  cannot  immedi- 
ately prevail  over  bad  legislation,  but  it  can  recommend 
better  legislation.  Good  school  laws  often  fail  utterly  for 
want  of  good  men  to  carry  them  out. 

Two  other  topics  remain,  supervision  and  instruction 
as  educational  instruments.  Good  administration  fails 

1  It  is  a  striking  commentary  upon  the  complete  unworldliness  of  most 
teachers,  —  and  their  consequent  unfitness  to  fit  boys  and  girls  for  the 
world  of  real  affairs,  —  that  only  a  few  of  them  ever  have  the  slightest 
notion  as  to  the  cost  of  the  building  in  which  they  teach ;  or  of  the  total 
or  per  capita  wealth  of  their  community;  or  even  of  the  salaries  of  any 
other  school  employees. 


EDUCATIONAL    INSTRUMENTS  193 

unless  carefully  followed  out  and  supervised.  We  hear, 
it  is  true,  certain  reactionaries  who,  seeing  the  truth  that 
the  one  thing  needful  is  to  give  the  child  a  competent 
teacher,  imagine  that  they  may  go  directly  to  this  end. 
They  forget  that,  as  a  matter  of  history,  it  has  been 
found  necessary  to  establish  this  special  complex  system 
which  they  so  decry.  No  doubt,  without  any  legislation 
or  administration  or  supervision,  some  children  would 
have  good  teachers.  At  least  for  a  time,  were  all  our 
legislators,  administrators,  and  supervisors  to  be  done 
away,  some  parents  would  maintain  private  teachers. 

In  milder  form,  some  critics  urge  that  principals,  super- 
visors, and  board  members  should  be  clerks  to  execute 
the  will  of  the  teachers.  It  is  no  adequate  reply  that 
chaos  might  come  again  since  each  teacher  would  prob- 
ably have  a  will  of  his  own  (or  her  own).  Such  indi- 
vidualism might  tend  to  the  discovery  of  genius  among 
teachers  and  among  pupils.  But  it  is  an  adequate  reply 
that  society  has  the  right  to  the  largest  service  of  the 
best  teachers  and  that  class-room  instruction  limits  such 
service.  The  very  first  purpose  of  supervision  is  to 
discover  genius  and  talent  and  to  set  these  to  larger 
tasks.  The  supervisor  is  simply  a  teacher  of  teachers 
in  order  that,  if  possible,  every  child  shall  certainly  have 
competent  instruction. 

Good  legislation  may  encourage  but  cannot  insure 
good  administration;  this  in  turn  may  encourage  but 
cannot  insure  good  supervision.  On  the  contrary,  super- 
vision, bad  in  quality,  or  insufficient  in  quantity,  nullifies 
good  administration  and  good  legislation.  When  we 
reach  instruction,  the  actual  presence  of  the  living, 
genuine  teacher  in  the  classroom  of  pupils,  we  come  upon 
an  enigma.  Laws,  administration,  supervision  may  all  be 
bad  ;  and  yet  for  a  time  in  some  spots  in  a  school  system, 
the  instruction  may  be  good.  I  repeat,  for  a  time,  in 
some  spots.  I  may  go  a  little  farther  and  say  that  all 


I94  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

the  time  in  some  class-rooms  or  in  others  there  is  some 
good  teaching.  However  bad  the  system,  a  few  good 
teachers  are  bound,  from  time  to  time,  to  creep  in.  Of 
these  few,  here  and  there  one  will  bear  up  for  a  year,  for 
a  decade,  perhaps  even  for  a  lifetime,  against  all  the 
poverty  of  resources,  paucity  of  ideas,  and  pride  of  opinion 
of  the  worst  State  legislators,  municipal  board  members, 
and  city  superintendents  and  principals.  Why?  Good 
teaching  is  entirely  natural  to  some  persons,  a  product 
of  their  character,  disposition,  scholarship.  It  bubbles 
out  of  them  a  sweet,  strong  stream  of  truth  and  wisdom. 
Such  a  spring  cannot  be  filled  up  or  dug  out  or  polluted. 
It  purifies  all  around  it.  Pupils,  parents,  citizens,  protect 
the  good  teacher  from  oppression,  and  encourage  him  in 
his  work  not  only  by  responding  in  their  own  characters, 
but  also  by  social  support  and  sympathy. 

But  the  exceptional  cases  must  not  blind  us  to  the 
general  fact.  This  nation  needs  now  for  its  eighty-five 
million  people  eight  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  teachers, 
twice  as  many  as  it  actually  has.  Nature  and  the  School 
have  not  hitherto  conspired  to  produce  all  teachers, 
"born  to  teach"  and  fitted  to  teach  well  against  all 
odds.  Perhaps  in  the  ten  teachers  actually  here,  in  the 
twenty  really  needed,  one  has  the  native  gifts.  The 
others  must  be  carefully  trained  and  informed,  con- 
stantly encouraged,  directed,  and  assisted,  and  generously 
supported  in  materials,  buildings,  and  personal  salaries. 
Supervision  is  the  mode  of  raising  and  keeping  up  to 
a  reasonable  standard  the  many  who  are  teachers  by 
necessity  and  by  special  preparation.  Not  that  the  nat- 
ural teacher  does  not  need  special  preparation  and  even 
frequent  counsel,  but  that  he  or  she  is  always  eager  to 
progress.  Such  a  teacher  is  always  an  advocate  and 
upholder  of  competent  supervision,  and  by  that  same 
token  is  apt  to  be  a  critic  and  denouncer  of  incompetent 
supervision. 


EDUCATIONAL   INSTRUMENTS  195 

1.  Supervision  that  discourages  good  instruction  is  danger- 
ous in  proportion  to  its  meddlesomeness.    It  often,  perhaps 
usually,  restrains  in  the  teacher  the  very  qualities  desired  in 
the  child,  —  self-activity,  range  of  effort  and  of  interest,  and 
self-reliance. 

2.  Supervision  that  "tithes  mint,  anise  and  cummin  "  and 
forgets  "  the  weightier  matters  "  is  a  nuisance  and  may  be  a 
danger.1 

3.  Supervision  that  does  not  understand  its  true  relations  to 
the  making  of  laws,  to  administration,  to  teachers,  to  parents, 
to  pupils,  and  to  the  general  public  prevents  better  supervision 
from  doing  its  good  work  in  the  particular  instance  and  is 
responsible  for  the  slow  acceptance  of  competent  supervision 
as  a  present,  insistent  educational  need. 

Though  often  associated  in  current  educational  prac- 
tice with  special  instruction,  supervision  is  a  very  dif- 
ferent matter.  Giving  lessons  to  pupils  and  giving 
lessons  to  teachers  are  very  good  exercises  in  prepa- 
ration for  supervision,  which  is  typically  seeing  lessons 
given  by  teachers  to  pupils.  Of  course,  supervision  is  a 
far  larger  matter  than  this  only,  but  it  centres  upon 
this.2 

It  is  the  business  of  instruction  to  bring  to  the  pupil 
information  that  he  needs  to  know,  is  capable  of  learn- 
ing, and  may  at  the  particular  time  learn  without  con- 
fusion of  ideas ;  to  supply  this  information  in  such 
a  manner  as  thereby  to  develop  his  interests  and  his 
powers ;  to  present  to  him  truth  and  principle  in  forms 

1  Jesus,  Matthew,  Gospel  xxiii,  23. 

"  If  a  man  may  lawfully  prefer  a  known  lesser  good  before  a  greater, 
and  be  justified  because  the  lesser  is  a  real  good,  then  he  may  be  feeding 
his  horse  though  he  knows  that  he  should  be  saving  the  life  of  his  child 
or  neighbor,  or  quenching  a  fire  in  the  city."  Baxter,  Works,  vol.  vi, 
p.  366. 

2  Chancellor,   Our  Schools:    Their  Administration  and   Supervision, 
chapters  iv  and  vii.   In  general,  one  supervisor  is  needed  for  every  ten 
teachers,  and  special  supervisors  are  desired  for  all  new  incoming  subjects 
and  exercises. 


196  THE   MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

of  beauty  so  that  he  will  desire  yet  more  truth ; x  to 
destroy  in  him  instincts  and  habits  popularly  known  as 
"evil;"  and  to  exercise,  and  thereby  to  develop,  in  him 
good  instincts  and  habits.  The  business  of  instruction 
is,  indeed,  much  more  than  this.  The  present  book  is 
but  an  epitome  of  some  phases  of  the  social  function  and 
individual  opportunity  of  the  teacher. 

Instruction,  considered  only  as  an  educational  instru- 
ment, is  the  last  process  in  the  mechanics  of  education.  As 
in  the  cases  of  legislation,  of  administration,  and  of  super- 
vision, what  is  good  instruction  may  perhaps  be  best  seen 
by  a  dogmatic  presentation  of  bad  or  poor  instruction. 

1.  Instruction  that  by  methods  of  compulsion  discourages 
spontaneity  in  any  of   its  phases  —  origination,  invention, 
interest,  self-expression  —  defeats  the  very  purpose  of  educa- 
tion, which  is  unfolding  of  powers. 

2.  Instruction  that  does  not  relate  in  psychological  and 
physiological   order   courses,  subjects,  topics,  details,  inci- 
dentals, produces  confusion  and  distress  where  clearness  and 
delight  are  all-essential.2 

3.  Instruction  that  improperly  evaluates  in  relation  to  the 
particular  class,  and  so  far  as  possible  the  particular  child, 
the  yearly,  monthly,  weekly,  daily,  hourly,  and  moment-by- 
moment  studies,  exercises,  and  recreations  is  incompetent  in 
the  degree  and  number  of  its  errors. 

4.  Instruction  that  does  not  day  by  day  advance  the  pupil 
in  the  organization  of  knowledge,  in  the  arts  of  using  it,  in 
self-knowledge,  and  in  self-control,  —  that  does  not  day  by 
day  advance  him  in  the  faith  that  the  world  is  a  cosmos  with 
a  universal  unity,  and  in  the  understanding  that  he  ought  to 
harmonize  and  unify  himself  as  an  integral,  independent  soul, 
free  from  the  snares  of  the  world,  —  fails  in  its  mission. 

1  "  The  True  is  what  man  holds  to  be ;  the  Beautiful,  what  he  desires 
and  holds  ought  to  be ;  the  Good,  the  choice  and  use  of  the  proper  means 
for  passing  from  the  True  to  the  Beautiful."  Davidson,  History  of 
Education,  p.  16. 

1  "  Education  is  a  process  not  of  accumulation,  but  of  assimilation." 
Hughes,  The  Making  of  Citizens,  p.  18. 


EDUCATIONAL   INSTRUMENTS  197 

5.  Instruction  that   does  not  subordinate  discipline  and 
management  to  its  own  higher  ends  makes  spirit  subordinate 
to  mechanism,  which  is  disloyalty,  ignorant  or  malicious,  to 
the  very  nature  of  this  Universe. 

6.  Instruction  that  exalts  into  ends  the  means  of  education 
—  the  school  arts,  information,  drill,  the  recitation,  discipline, 
books,  laboratories,  buildings  —  leads  the  School  into  a  cul 
de  sac. 

Let  us  imitate  in  order  to  invent ;  reproduce  in  order  to 
originate  \  learn  words  in  order  to  know  the  things,  the  drama, 
the  relations  for  which  the  words  stand ;  examine  forms  in 
order  to  understand  substance  and  meaning ;  observe  facts 
in  order  to  discover  their  causes  and  their  effects ;  and  let  us 
remember  all  the  while  that  the  purpose,  as  Browning  said,  is 
to  help  the  child  and  youth  to  "educe  the  man." 

In  all  these  matters  of  school  legislation,  administra- 
tion, supervision,  and  instruction,  there  are  certain  con- 
siderations of  a  qualitative  nature.  In  view  of  the  vast 
pressure  upon  each  social  institution  and  upon  each  indi- 
vidual from  contemporaneous  affairs  and  people  and  from 
ancient  traditions,  it  is  not  true  in  letter  or  in  spirit  that, 
provided  education  is  maintained,  the  best  legislation, 
administration,  supervision,  or  instruction  is  the  least, 
and  that,  therefore,  the  fewer  laws  and  legislators,  rules 
and  administrators,  methods  and  supervisors,  books,  ex- 
ercises, and  teachers,  the  better.  Rather  is  it  true  that, 
because  of  this  pressure,  we  need  certain  measures  de- 
signed not  primarily  to  improve  education,  but  designed 
to  defend  education  from  external  attack.  Nevertheless 
so  vast  is  the  work  to  be  done,  the  knowledge  to  be  de- 
livered to  youth,  the  range  of  habits  and  insights  to  be 
acquired,  and  so  slight,  at  best,  are  the  individual  powers 
of  teacher  and  pupil,  —  who  in  every  last  analysis,  what- 
ever be  the  criteria,  constitute  the  School,  —  that  legis- 
lation, administration,  supervision,  and  instruction  should 
proceed  with  measures  and  men  as  direct,  as  clear,  and  as 
few  as  are  absolutely  necessary  to  get  the  work  well  done. 


198  THE    MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

To  specify  by  way  of  illustration. 

1.  A  great  body  of  State  school  laws  by  no  means  indicates 
a  high  quality  of  legislation.    The  mere  mass  is  in  itself  an 
embarrassment. 

2.  Similarly,  the  local  board  of  education  that  promulgates 
many  rules  and  regulations  probably  has  an  actually  worse 
school   system   than   one  that  promulgates  few.    The  very 
smallness  of  their  number  tends  to  the  careful  consideration 
of  each  item. 

3.  A  State  with  a  State  board  of  education,  a  State  board 
of  examiners,  and  various  other  State  boards,  all  composed  of 
laymen,  and  each  board  assigned  to  some  particular  State 
school,  has  diffused  responsibility  too  widely.    All  these  ama- 
teurs will  have  so  little  experience  as  never  to  become  even 
semi-professional.1 

4.  Similarly,  a   State  with  many  county  superintendents 
rather  than  a  few  State  inspectors  will  suffer  because  the 
supply  of  really  fine  administrators  is  always  small. 

5.  A  large  local  board  of  education — any  number  over 
seven   members,  the  more   than   seven   the  worse  —  by  no 
means  indicates  a  sufficiency  of  competent  thought  given  by 
the  representatives  of  the  public  or  by  the  delegates  of  the 
mayor  to  rtie  problems  of  the  schools.2    It  is  true  that  an 
able,  honest,  and  courageous  school  superintendent  can  split 
and  therefore  control  a  large  board  more  easily  than  a  small 
one,  —  a  fact  that  makes  the  large  corrupt  board  less  danger- 
ous than  a  small  corrupt  one,  —  but  this  truth  constitutes  an 
additional  argument  against  the  large  board  because  such 
efforts  by  the  superintendent  consume  time  and  energy  that  it 

1  After  a  year's  experience  as  a  board  member,  in  a  certain  city,  the 
amateur  "  corrected  "  an  opinion  of  the  city  superintendent,  saying,  "  I 
have  looked  carefully  into  this  matter ;  in  fact,  I  spent  an  evening  in  con- 
sultation with  So-and-So  [another  amateur] ;  and  I  am  quite  as  competent 
as  you  to  decide  the  principles  involved."  To  which  the  superintendent 
replied,  "  I  will  not  express  any  doubt  as  to  the  superior  value  of  your 
opinion  and  that  of  So-and-So ;  but  I  venture  to  suggest  that  you  will 
find  it  rather  hard  to  persuade  the  people  of  this  city  to  prefer  your 
opinion  to  mine." 

1  Where  the  board  of  education  does  not  construct  and  repair  the 
school  buildings,  the  number  of  members  should  never  exceed  three. 


EDUCATIONAL   INSTRUMENTS  199 

should  be  possible  for  him  to  devote  to  directly  educational 
work.  The  compact,  small,  corrupt  board  that  cannot  be  made 
respectable  by  the  corrections  of  a  school  superintendent  also 
cannot  avoid  public  responsibility  for  its  acts  and  failures  to 
act.  In  America,  whether  the  small  corrupt  board  is  ap- 
pointive or  elective,  it  can  seldom  last  long.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  small  boards  are  almost  always  of  a  much  higher  average 
quality  of  character,  intelligence,  and  efficiency  than  the  large 
boards.  Mere  size  invites  graft,  pull,  influence,  chicanery, 
and  oratory,  and  deceives  the  public.  Moreover,  the  board  of 
many  members,  each  desiring  something  to  do  or  to  get,  in- 
evitably trespasses  upon  the  domain  of  the  educational  staff. 
6.  Let  us  beware  of  the  seducing  power  over  the  imagina- 
tion of  large  numbers,  such  as  large  expenditures  per  capita 
of  pupils,  large  number  of  teachers  per  pupil,  large  invest- 
ments in  school  buildings  per  capita  of  pupils,  great  variety 
of  courses  and  of  enterprises.  The  presumption,  and  the  pre- 
sumption only,  is  in  favor  of  the  large  numbers.  The  cost  per 
capita  in  a  city  may  rise  in  three  decades  fifty  or  a  hundred 
per  cent,  and  yet  the  actual  schooling  be  worse.  The  teachers 
may  be  drawn  from  inferior  social  classes,  principals  and 
superintendents  may  be  mere  educational  mechanics,  text- 
books may  be  unwisely,  even  corruptly  chosen,  marking, 
grading,  and  promotion  may  have  become  purely  a  mathe- 
matical routine,  and  the  daily  programme  a  mere  concatena- 
tion, badly  proportioned  at  that. 

It  would  appear  from  the  various  foregoing  considera- 
tions that,  in  the  formal  system  of  education,  the  chief 
difficulty  in  the  proper  constitution  and  correlation  of 
these  educational  instruments — legislation,  administra- 
tion, supervision,  and  instruction  —  arises  invariably 
from  the  activity  and  authority  of  the  layman,  of  the 
educational  amateur,  and  of  the  semi-professional.  Such 
persons  as  individuals  should  have  absolutely  no  political 
or  legal  or  other  rights  save  the  financial  in  education,1 

1  And  then  only  as  the  delegates  of  the  people,  as  representatives,  not 
as  individuals. 


200  THE   MACHINERY   OF   EDUCATION 

for  they  certainly  have  none  in  sound  morals.  To  say 
this  is  not  to  challenge  democracy  ;  on  the  contrary,  it 
is  to  assert  the  only  democracy  historically  and  philoso- 
phically right,  the  democracy  of  general  society.  To  em- 
ploy as  a  teacher  for  a  class  of  children  one  who  is  not 
professionally  equipped  as  a  teacher,  and  formally  recog- 
nized as  such  by  the  best  teachers,  is  not  democracy,  but 
sheer,  perverting  tyranny.  To  empower  ten,  or  twenty 
laymen,  who  claim  to  be  nothing  more,  to  select  and 
employ  teachers,  to  establish  courses  of  study,  to  make 
rules  and  regulations,  in  short,  to  conduct  education,  is 
not  democracy  but  mind-slaughter,  tempered  by  the 
protests  of  educators  and  of  parents.  As  an  institution, 
education  is  essentially,  and  therefore  necessarily,  an 
hierarchy.  The  democracy  of  society  should  control 
education  not  by  wanton  interferences  at  any  and  every 
point  from  the  State  legislature  to  the  kindergarten 
class,  but  solely  as  an  institution,  as  it  controls  Property, 
Family,  Church,  and  Business.  The  separation  in  Amer- 
ica of  Church  and  State,  formally  established  in  our 
Constitutions,  must,  of  course,  be  upon  a  somewhat  dif- 
ferent line  from  that  which  is  to  separate  State  and 
School :  but  the  separation  must  not  be,  therefore  will 
not  be,  any  the  less  complete. 


Genius  is  formed  in  solitude,  character  in  the  stream  of  the  world. 
—  GOETHE,  Torqualo  Tasso. 


CHAPTER   XI 

INTELLIGENCE 
(a)  OBSERVATION.    (&)  LITERACY 

Concerning  an  educated  individual  we  may  fairly  ask,  —  Can  he  see  straight  ?  Can  he 
recognize  a  fact  ?  Has  he  self-control  ?  or  do  his  passions  run  away  with  him  ?  or  unto- 
ward events  daunt  him  ?  Does  he  continue  to  grow  in  power  and  in  wisdom  throughout 
life  ?  —  ELIOT,  More  Money  for  the  Public  Schools,  p.  64. 

When 

We  gloriously  forget  ourselves  and  plunge 
Soul-forward,  headlong,  into  a  book's  profound, 
Impassioned  for  its  beauty  and  salt  of  truth  — 
'T  is  then  we  get  the  right  good  from  a  book. 

ELIZABETH  BARRETT  BROWNING,  Aurora  Leigh. 

THAT  all  knowledge  is  derived  from  the  senses  was 
proved  by  Hume  and  interpreted  by  Kant  in  works  that 
laid  the  foundations  for  modern  metaphysics  and  psy- 
chology.1 Modern  educational  theory,  however,  seems  to 
have  neglected  to  note  the  significance  of  this  truth. 
Fortunately,  educational  practice,  because  in  the  English 
race  it  issues  from  tradition  (which  in  origin  is  near  to 

1  Hume  :  "  The  most  lively  thought  is  still  inferior  to  the  dullest  sensa- 
tion "  (§  2).  "  All  belief  of  matter  of  fact  or  real  existence  is  derived  merely 
from  some  object  present  to  the  sense  or  memory  "  (§  5).  "  But  as  to  the 
causes  of  these  general  causes, — the  ultimate  causes  of  natural  opera- 
tions and  phenomena,  —  these  are  totally  shut  up  from  human  curiosity 
and  enquiry"  (§  2).  An  Enquiry  concerning  Human  Understanding. 

Kant :  "  It  may  well  be  that  experience  is  itself  made  up  of  two  elements, 
one  received  through  impressions  of  sense,  and  the  other  supplied  from 
itself  by  our  faculty  of  knowledge  on  occasion  of  those  impressions  "  (Cri- 
tique of  Pure  Reason,  §  i).  "  Beyond  the  limits  of  experience,  space  and 
time  have  no  meaning  whatever,  for  they  are  only  in  the  senses,  and  have 
no  reality  apart  from  them  "  ( Transcendental  Analytic,  §  23).  "  The  cate- 
gories, as  proceeding  from  understanding,  contain  the  grounds  of  the  pos- 
sibility of  any  experience  whatever"  (Op.  cit.  supra,  §  27). 


204  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

common  sense),  has  not  entirely  failed  to  incorporate  in 
its  methods  and  devices  the  logical  conclusion.  If  all 
knowledge  is  derived  from  experience,  which  obviously 
is  occasioned  and  conditioned  by  sensation,  then  educa- 
tion should  develop  accuracy,  fullness,  variety,  keenness, 
—  in  short,  truthfulness,  —  of  the  senses  of  the  individual 
who  is  to  be  educated.  Moreover,  this  truthfulness  of 
the  senses,  this  knowledge  from  experience,  this  near- 
ness of  the  mind  to  the  world,  is  the  foundation  of  the 
entire  structure  of  the  soul,  a  foundation,  therefore,  de- 
pendent upon  its  own  qualities  for  its  solidity,  its  depth, 
and  its  extension. 

In  education,  we  have  been  too  much  wont  to  accept, 
unquestioned,  whatever  the  senses  have  reported  as  being 
correct  and  complete ;  unquestioned,  the  ability  of  the 
body  to  develop  these  senses  adequately  without  direction 
of  the  mind  ;  unquestioned,  the  continued  veracity  of  the 
senses  irrespective  of  the  mode  of  life  to  which  in  school, 
at  home,  and  everywhere  else,  we  may  subject  the  body. 
When,  therefore,  the  college  professor  of  physical  or 
natural  science  asserts  that  this  boy  or  girl,  entering  his 
class  after  a  dozen  years  of  elementary  and  secondary 
schooling,  cannot  see  an  object  truly,  we  have  been  sur- 
prised. And  yet  as  in  the  case  of  so  many  other  matters 
of  surprise,  the  true  surprise  is  that  after  such  schooling 
and  such  other  civilized  environment  of  the  pupil,  we,  the 
educators,  should  be  surprised  at  this  fact,  for  we  do 
not  found  our  education  upon  the  only  sure  foundation 
of  truthful  sense-reporting.  We  have  made  two  errors  : 
first,  we  have  taken  truthful  sense-reporting  as  a  meta- 
physical matter,  a  necessary  condition  of  a  mind  in  the 
world,  a  thing  of  original  certainty  and  not  of  empirical 
development ;  and,  second,  we  have  supposed  that  because 
savages  in  their  natural  lives  learn  to  see,  to  hear,  to 
smell,  to  taste,  to  feel  accurately,  so  must  also  the  civil- 
ized man,  a  non  sequitur,  a  fallacy  dangerous  to  the  phys- 


INTELLIGENCE  205 

ical  welfare  of  the  race,  a  positive  source  of  degeneration. 
We  forget  that  the  savage  must  have  accurate  senses  or 
die  ;  but  because  we  see  that  the  senses  alone  will  not  and 
cannot  protect  the  civilized  man,  we  neglect  them  almost 
entirely  and  rely  upon  food  laws,  police,  books,  and  a 
thousand  other  assurances  of  civilized  society,  mostly  on 
paper  and  not  effective  in  reality,  to  protect  child  and 
man  from  death  and  other  danger. 

So  utterly  vain  and  superficial  have  we  become  in  our 
consideration  of  the  sensational  life  of  man  as  to  suppose 
that  the  special  objective  senses  are  the  only  senses  of 
any  value,  small  as  their  values  are.  But  man  has  many 
senses  beyond  the  "five."  Probably  every  section  of 
his  skin,  every  region  of  his  body,  every  psychosis  and 
every  neurosis,  has  a  special  sense-organ  to  record  it,  is 
indeed  a  special  sense.  Lucky  folk  are  those  who  sense 
danger ;  fortunate  folk  those  who  sense  the  future ;  good 
folk  those  who  sense  the  very  desires  of  others  ;  mag- 
netic folk  those  who  sense  the  dispositions  of  others.1 
The  old  notion  that  intelligence  functions  somewhere  in 
the  body  is  utterly  inadequate  to  explain  the  observed 
phenomena  of  soul-life.2 

In  general,  to  be  really  intelligent  we  must  be  ac- 
quainted with  the  operations  (i)  of  the  special  senses  so 
called,  of  which  in  civilization  vision  is  perhaps  the  most 
important,  for  we  are  now  an  eye-minded  race  ;  (2)  of 
the  general  senses,  of  which  temperature  is  now  of  great 
significance ;  (3)  of  the  sympathetic  nervous  senses,  the 
metabolism  of  which  is  of  very  great  importance  to  a 
creature  with  a  mind  constantly  draining  its  body  of  ner- 
vous energy  ;  (4)  of  the  organic  senses,  of  which  aeration 

1  Jastrow,  Hall,  Myers,  Maeterlinck,  Titchener,  James,  Hyslop,  Aiken, 
Gould,  Mitchell,  and  many  other  writers    upon   psychology  and  upon 
medicine,  have  opened  up  this  subject,  which  is  yet  deep  in  the  ore. 

2  Man  has  over  40,000  sense-organs  and  receives  over  40,000  different 
kinds  and  degrees  of  sensations.   Titchener,  Outlines  of  Psychology,  p.  67. 


206  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

or  blood-oxygenation  is  absolutely  vital,  as  the  statistics 
of  tuberculosis  warn  us ; 1  (5)  of  the  life-currents,  periodici- 
ties,2 tides  of  will,  of  emotion,  of  revery  ;  (6)  of  lethargy, 
of  ecstasy,  of  fatigue,  of  all  manner  of  warnings.  Of  all 
these,  the  watchword  is  not  to  suppress  but  to  exercise 
or  to  inhibit,  that  we  may  know  and  understand  the  body 
by  which  and  in  which  we  live.  It  is  a  far  more  useful 
tool  than  most  of  us  yet  know.  And  we  do  not  yet  know 
what  it  really  is.3  We  do  not  know  how  food  supplies 
life,  or  what  the  matter  in  food  or  the  energy  in  it  really 
is.  A  whole  new  physiology  is  now  coming  to  be.4 

It  is  not,  however,  to  the  introspective  or  subjective 
aspects  of  this  matter  that  the  attention  of  educators 
should  chiefly  be  directed,  but  to  its  objective  and  ex- 
ternal aspects.  The  business  of  the  soul  is  to  look 
forth  upon  the  world,  to  know  it,  and  to  include  it.  In- 
telligence begins  with  observation  (which  is  not  merely 
a  matter  of  the  eye) ;  and  intelligence,  the  power  to 
bring  together  within  one's  self  various  facts,  is  the 
beginning  of  the  life  of  the  soul  —  as  every  observer  of 
babies  knows,  whether  a  mother  looking  on  with  pas- 
sionate love  or  a  scientist  looking  on  with  dispassionate 
candor.  The  world  awakens  the  spirit  sleeping  in  the 
stranger,  totally  ignorant  of  this  particular  environment. 

To  acquire  power  of  correct  observation,  certain  courses 

1  Lankester,  Kingdom  of  Man. 

2  Herein  lie  the  fearful  sex-problems  of  civilized  humanity.   Hall,  Ado- 
lescence, chapter  vii. 

3  "  We  cannot  say  just  when  the  food  we  take  becomes  no  longer  a 
foreign  substance  to  be  acted  upon,  but  part  of  the  true  physical  self  and 
endowed  itself  with  assimilative  power,  nor  can  we  say  when  tissues  on 
the  down  road  of  decay  cease  to  be  the  true  physical  self,  any  more  than 
the  psychologist  can  tell  when  the  matter  of  apperception  becomes  an 
organ  by  it."    Hall,  Adolescence,  p.  29. 

4  Atwood,  Wiley,  and  many  others.    Le  Dantic,  Nature  and  Origin  of 
Life.    Collaterally,  we  are  developing  a  new  system  of  therapeutics,  —  to 
protect  life  by  raising  the  body  to  yet  higher  vitality.    Health  is  the  true 
prophylactic  against  disease. 


INTELLIGENCE  207 

are  necessary  :  first,  to  "  sense  "  the  thing ;  second,  to 
compare  it  with  other  things ;  third,  to  separate  it  from 
other  things  (that  is,  to  see  its  likeness  and  unlikeness); 
fourth,  by  recollection  to  reproduce  it  accurately  in  the 
imagination ;  fifth,  to  name  it ;  and  sixth,  to  recall  it  by 
its  name  or  symbol.  The  baby  begins  the  process ;  the 
old  man  dies  before  completing  it  with  reference  to 
more  than  a  very,  very  small  fraction  of  all  the  possible 
things  to  be  "  sensed  "  or  observed  in  this  world.  Unfor- 
tunately, after  the  child  comes  to  school,  often  he  finds 
not  assistance  in  this  necessary  physio-psychological 
enterprise,  but  every  hindrance  conceivable,  by  direct 
human  ingenuity  or  permissible  to  human  blundering. 
It  is  this  truth-finding  talent  that  the  school  destroys. 
Fortunately,  we  have  begun  to  recognize  our  mortal  sin. 

Let  the  child  paint  the  flower  that  he  sees. 

Let  him  sing  the  rhythmic  sound  that  he  hears. 

Let  him  carve  the  block  that  he  feels. 

Let  him  tell  the  event  that  of  his  own  senses  he  knows. 

Let  him  dramatize  the  actions  that  fill  his  imagina- 
tion. 

And  every  moment  let  us  teach  ourselves  to  observe, 
that  we  may  no  longer  lead  the  child  astray. 

Let  us  encourage  sheer  truthfulness  ;  it  is  the  gold 
coin  that  purchases  intelligence.  The  truth-finding  boy 
has  the  first  mortgage,  warranty  and  quit-claim  trust, 
upon  success  in  the  real  world.  The  truth-finder  dis- 
covers out  in  the  world  his  true  self,  the  larger  person 
that  he  hopes  to  become,  for  truth  is  the  proper  home 
of  the  soul. 

Indubitably,  this  establishment  of  sense-training  as 
the  basis  of  the  conscious  evolution  of  intelligence,  this 
teaching  that  natural  observer,  the  child,  to  observe  sys- 
tematically, rejecting  illusions,  errors,  and  accidents 
and  seeking  always  the  real,  the  right,  and  the  usual  or 
universal,  this  education  of  the  knower,  the  scientist,  in 


208  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

man  will  be  accomplished  only  by  correcting  the  theory 
of  education  and  reforming  its  methods  and  practices  ; 
because  in  this  world  despite  appearances,  in  the  world 
behind  appearances,  in  the  world  of  truth,  as  soon  as 
truth  is  found,  we  obey.  Sense-training,  however,  though 
the  first  educational  end,  is  only  a  mediate  process  in 
the  schooling  of  the  child ;  and  like  every  other  mediate 
process  of  value,  it  serves  not  only  general  uses  but  cer- 
tain particular  uses,  —  in  this  case,  it  serves  the  partic- 
ular use  of  leading  directly  to  hearing,  to  reading,  and 
to  speaking  words,  that  is,  to  literacy. 

To  say  that  thought  is  expressed'  in  words  and  by  means 
of  words  is  to  understate  the  truth,  for  thought  and  language 
are  warp  and  woof  of  that  knowledge  with  which  in  this  world 
the  soul  clothes  itself.  Without  words  to  receive  and  to  hold 
one's  ideas,  one  must  forever  repeat  his  thinking ;  and  can- 
not go  forward.  Language  is  the  structure  by  which  man 
builds  himself  heavenward.  He  sustains  himself  at  each 
higher  stage  by  these  crystalline  formulas  of  thought  which 
we  call  words. 

The  purpose  of  the  School  is  to  enlarge,  to  hasten,  and 
to  insure  the  development  of  personality,  which  is  self- 
knowledge  through  world  understanding,  which  is  indi- 
viduality clothed  with  wisdom  regarding  Nature  and 
human  nature,  which  is  the  social  man,  which  is  the  self- 
respecting  man  intelligently  at  work  in  the  world,  which 
is  the  soul  in  the  presence  of  God  and  the  works  of  God, 
which  is  the  man  redeemed  from  the  body,1  from  the 
past,2  from  hate  of  his  neighbor,3  from  all  particular  fears 

1  "  And  they  that  are  Christ's  have  crucified  the  flesh  •with  the  passions 
and  lusts."   Paul,  Galatians  v,  24. 

2  The  familiar  doctrine  of  regeneration,  as  expressed  in  the  story  of 
Nicodemus.    Jesus,  John,  Gospel  iii,  1-21. 

3  The  neighbor-philosophy  of  Christians  so  bitterly  reviled  by  Scho- 
penhauer. Hartmann,  Nietzsche,  and  Weininger:  perhaps  best  expressed 
in  the  parable  of  the  "Good  Samaritan."  Jesus,  Luke,  Gospel x, 29-37. 


INTELLIGENCE  309 

and  affections  through  one  complete  fear1  and  one  ab- 
sorbing love  for  the  All-father.2 

The  word  literate  as  applied  to  persons  means  able  to 
recognize  letters,  that  is,  able  to  read.  An  illiterate  can- 
not read  and,  of  course,  therefore  cannot  write.  More 
broadly,  we  imply  by  illiteracy  that  the  person  cannot 
read  and  write  with  any  accuracy  or  facility.  But  the 
term  may  properly  be  taken  much  more  broadly.  To 
speak  affirmatively,  he  is  literate  who  can  read  with  un- 
derstanding and  who  can  write,  adequately  expressing 
himself  thereby. 

The  first  element  in  reading  is  to  associate  a  sound 
with  a  sign.  The  r  means  the  rolling  sound.  The  r 
sounded  recalls  the  r  signed  in  either  script  or  print. 
This  association,  which  consists  of  a  new  sensation  re- 
calling and  interpreting  a  former  sensation,  is  the  famil- 
iar "  apperception  "  of  modern  psychology  ;  but  it  is  by 
no  means  so  simple  as  it  appears  to  be.  No  animals  have 
ever  been  able  to  achieve  it.3  The  next  element  in  read- 
ing is  to  associate  with  something  else  the  r  sounded 
and  signed  ;  this  something  else  may  be  an  object  of 
the  senses  or  an  abstract  relation,  itself  difficult  and  com- 
plicated. Consider  such  words  as  oar  (a  visible  thing), 
row  (a  visible  action),  are  (a  conjunctive  relation),  or  (a 
disjunctive  relation),  and  err  (a  mental  act  or  quality).  To 
be  really  literate,  one  must  know  all  these  matters.  There 
is  psychological  substance  here,  sufficient  for  an  entire 
book.  In  truth,  just  as  no  man  has  a  complete  life  of  the 
senses,  so  no  one  is  completely  literate,  not  even  the  poly- 
glot, not  even  the  philosopher.  And  on  the  side  of  literate 
expression,  the  failure  to  be  complete  is  even  greater,  for 

1  "  The  fear  of  the  Lord  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom."  Psalm  cxi,  10 ; 
Proverbs  i,  7  ;  ix,  ro. 

2  "  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God."  Jesus,  Matthew,  Gospel xxii.  37. 

3  In  the  case  of  the  German  horse  "  Hans,"  considerably  exploited  in 
the  periodical  literature  of  1905,  later  tests  exploded  the  notion  that  he 
can  read  and  compute.    His  perceptive  powers  are,  however,  marvelous. 


210  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

while  words  once  expressed  are  difficult  to  understand, 
it  is  far  more  difficult  to  put  thought  into  them.  In  a 
certain  aspect,  therefore,  Avith  individuals  it  is  simply 
the  case  of  greater  or  less  literacy  and  of  less  or  greater 
illiteracy.  In  addition,  there  are  the  signal  technical 
deficiencies  of  language  in  general  and  of  every  separate 
language  in  particular.  The  master  of  two  languages 
can  express  himself  more  fully  and  acquaint  himself 
more  freely  with  the  thoughts  of  others  than  can  the 
master  of  one.  To  particularize,  English  needs  forty-two 
different  phonetic  signs,  while  it  has  but  twenty-six. 
Moreover,  there  are  at  least  forty  more  simple  and  use- 
ful phonetic  sounds  known  to  other  languages  but  un- 
known in  English.  And  yet  in  respect  to  phonetic  sounds, 
English  is  perhaps  the  broadest  of  all  tongues,  and  no 
other  language  has  more  phonetic  signs.  Again,  we  have 
many  unnecessary  duplications  of  combinatioas  of  signs 
for  sounds,  as,  for  example,  qu  and  kw  (quart,  awkward), 
cks  and  x  (ducks,  fox).1 

The  task,  therefore,  of  acquiring  literacy  is  twofold, 
involving  reading  and  expression.  And  it  resolves  itself 
into  three  general  stages :  recognition  and  use  of  pho- 
netic signs  as  such,  converting  them  into  sounds,  to- 
gether with  converting  sounds  into  signs,  and  association 
of  signs  and  of  sounds  with  ideas,  broadly  defined.  We 
have  an  ill-considered  notion  that  the  first  two  stages 
belong  to  early  childhood  only  ;  and  even  go  so  far  as  to 
say  that  we  should  study  not  only  English,  but  the  so- 
called  "foreign  languages,"  before  ten  years  of  age.  But 
the  foreign  languages  that  we  have  in  mind  are  those 
employing  our  own  phonetic  signs.  Few  would  argue  in 

1  There  are  many,  many  other  difficulties  with  languages.  One  is  that 
words  do  not  ring  true  to  the  thought  in  them.  Our  English  word  love  is 
too  short  and  dull  in  tone.  Amor  and  Hebe  are  more  beautiful,  more  sug- 
gestive of  the  content-meaning.  Another  difficulty  is  that  sentences  often 
blur  and  tangle  thought.  The  literary  artist  is  the  one  who  most  closely 
observes  and  most  successfully  overcomes  these  language-difficulties. 


INTELLIGENCE  211 

favor  of  studying  Hebrew,  or  Sanskrit,  or  Chinese,  or 
hieroglyphics  and  cuneiform  in  early  childhood.  In  truth, 
we  have  crowded  down  upon  childhood  a  very  serious 
labor ;  and  we  do  not  give  children  sufficient  credit  for 
their  success  in  mastering  what  is  in  fact  the  most  diffi- 
cult feat  to  be  performed  by  the  human  mind,  a  feat  in 
comparison  with  which  art  and  music,  war  and  business 
are  indeed  easy.  Because  story-telling,  conversation, 
busy  work,  games  under  oral  direction,  and  oral  number 
eliminate  one  of  the  steps  in  this  process,  namely,  the 
phonetic  sign,  they  are  coming  to  be  regarded  as  the 
standard  school  work  for  children  under  eight  years  of 
age.  The  attempt  to  teach  children  of  four  and  five  to 
read  and  to  write  has  been  a  conspicuous  failure,  and  the 
attempt  itself  evidenced  complete  ignorance  both  of 
genetic  physiology  and  of  genetic  psychology,  which,  of 
course,  were  practically  unknown  before  1875.  Now, 
however,  such  ignorance  on  the  part  of  educators  is 
scarcely  excusable. 

Not  only  are  these  things  true  ;  but  in  our  satisfaction 
with  our  extraordinary  success  in  bringing  nearly  all 
children,  even  the  mediocre,  to  phonetic  literacy,  we 
forget  the  third  and  vastly  greater,  the  infinite,  problem 
of  perfect  literacy  through  interpretation  and  expression. 
This  is  why  our  educational  work  with  so  many  children 
over  thirteen  or  fourteen  years  of  age  has  been  a  total 
failure.  Consider  the  fact  that  most  boys  and  girls  desire 
to  leave  school  at  these  ages.  Of  a  hundred  boys  and 
girls  in  school  at  eight  years  of  age,  we  think  that  we 
do  well  to  retain  fifty  at  fifteen  years  of  age  and  two  at 
eighteen.  Yet  we  know  perfectly  well  that  of  the  fifty 
children  remaining  after  fifteen  years  of  age  at  school,  one 
half  are  present  from  parental  compulsion  of  one  kind 
or  another.  We  know  that  the  four-year  high  schools 
and  academies  do  not  contain  any  such  numbers  of  chil- 
dren as  do  the  four-year  primary  or  even  the  four-year 


212  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

grammar  grade  schools.  We  flatter  ourselves  that  the 
children  are  forced  out  of  school  by  economic  necessity 
or  that  they  leave  because  they  are  dull.  And  yet  we 
see  every  year  the  sons  and  daughters  of  day  laborers, 
male  and  female,  and  dependent  orphans  graduating  from 
the  same  secondary  schools  and  even  from  the  colleges  ; 
and  we  see  also  very  dull  boys  and  girls  surviving  to  win 
university  degrees. 

Let  us  face  the  situation  and  look  into  it.  Let  us 
note  that  dire  poverty  has  not  wholly  blocked  the  way 
of  boys  and  girls  of  talent,  and  that  sheer  dullness  is,  if 
not  curable,  at  least  remediable  by  right  teaching,  as  the 
career  of  many  a  well-to-do  boy  under  tutors  has  proven. 
American  democracy  is  founded  upon  the  theory  that 
poverty  is  not  a  bar,  but  only  a  barrier,  to  opportunity. 
Many  a  President  and  Governor  has  surmounted  that 
barrier.  And  European  monarchy  is  founded  upon  the 
theory  that  mediocrity  may  be  instructed  in  the  ways  of 
kingship.  Otherwise,  hereditary  Kaisers  and  Kings 
would  have  disappeared  long  ago. 

Still  another  feature  of  language  requires  consideration. 

It  is  a  dilatory  mode  of  expression  and  of  interpretation. 
We  think  with  a  speed  that  would  be  incredible,  were  we 
not  so  familiar  with  the  phenomenon.  To  speak  and  to 
write  well,  one  must  acquire  the  power  to  hold  a  thought 
in  consciousness.  By  its  natural  constitution,  not  only 
is  the  mind  dissipated,  but  exceedingly  swift.  We  must 
remember  that  thought  does  not  require  language  or 
even  action.  The  makers  of  literature  have  constructed 
many  a  tale  to  display  how  much  a  man  may  experience 
in  but  a  few  seconds  of  time.  We  are  all  aware  of  the 
range  and  speed  of  our  thought  in  the  course  of  very 
brief  moments  of  sleep,  as  in  a  day-dream,  or  of  excite- 
ment, as  in  rescue  from  drowning.  In  a  certain  sense, 
language  impedes  thought.  It  sets  the  mind  in  harness 
for  the  drawing  of  loads.  Talleyrand  said  cynically  that 


INTELLIGENCE  213 

language  is  given  to  disguise  thought.  But  no  amount 
of  language  and  no  skill,  however  great,  in  language  can 
prevent  the  observer  from  getting  the  truth  by  the  more 
natural  modes  of  expression  of  face  and  of  voice,  of  ges- 
ture and  of  manner.  By  its  direct  appeal  to  the  eye,  a 
picture  tells  its  story  with  almost  the  speed  and  range  of 
thought  itself,  almost  eliminating  time  as  a  factor  in  get- 
ting the  truth.  And  by  its  direct  appeal  to  the  ear,  using 
no  mediate  signs,  a  tune  without  words  (and  therefore 
free  from  definition  and  limitation)  floods  all  the  soul. 

It  is  because  of  these  considerations  that  we  need  in 
the  formal  system  of  education  not  only  reading,  writing, 
arithmetic,  geography,  and  history,  but  also  music,  paint- 
ing, drama,  and  travel. 

But  while  language  impedes  thought  as  a  process,  it 
often  marvelously  condenses  thought  as  a  result.  We 
can  think  in  but  a  small,  seemingly  an  infinitesimally 
small,  part  of  the  time  required-  to  find  the  words  and 
to  form  the  sentences  that  express  our  thinking.  But 
when  the  thinking  is  ended  and  the  words  are  chosen  and 
arranged,  we  may  have  such  a  condensation  of  thought 
as  amounts  to  a  miracle  and  sets  astir  the  wonder,  the 
delight,  the  gratitude  of  many  millions.1  For  hundreds 
of  generations,  men  had  been  thinking  hard  in  their  de- 
sire to  know  the  nature  of  God.  Jesus  answered  their 
question,  supplied  the  desire  of  their  hearts,  finished 
finally  that  inquiry  when  He  declared  the  new  synthesis, 
"  God  is  love." 

To  us  is  left  the  finding  of  the  explanation.  Because  "  God 
is  love,"  and  can  desire  for  man  only  good,2  we  should  pray, 

1  "...  jewels  five-words-long,  — 
That  on  the  stretch'd  forefinger  of  all  Time 
Sparkle  for  ever." 

Tennyson,  The  Princess,  ii. 

2  Absolutely  irrespective  of  the  merits  of  the  individual  man.  The  rain 
comes  upon  the  just  and  the  unjust  alike.  Jesus,  Matthew,  Gospelv,  45. 


214  THE    EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

"Not  my  will  but  Thine  be  done."  Philosophy  may  inquire 
how  the  God  of  love  can  tolerate  evil,  or  whether  all  evil  is 
but  good  in  the  making,  or  whether  evil  is  necessary  in  order 
that  good  may  come  to  pass ;  but  it  can  never  again  inquire 
whether  God  is  part  good,  part  evil,  an  infinite  conflicting 
chaos,  for  love  is  cosmic,  and  it  is  more  credible  that  there 
is  no  God  than  that  He  is  double-minded  and  unstable  in 
his  ways.  Ages  of  thought  are  crystallized  in  those  three 
words,  "God  is  love;"  ages  yet  to  come  are  forthshadowed 
in  them. 

In  lesser  matters,  men  have  wrought  with  language 
wonders  upon  wonders.  History,  literature,  philosophy, 
science  employ  the  sentences  of  the  masters  as  land- 
marks of  progress.  Revolutions  and  wars,  poems  and 
temples,  constitutions  and  customs,  these  the  masters  of 
thought  and  of  language  have  formulated  in  phrases  that 
shall  endure  as  long  as  the  culture  of  man  shall  endure. 
They  are  bases  and  bulwarks  for  government,  for 
religion,  and  for  whatever  else  man  requires  in  his  unre- 
mitting effort  to  know  and  to  realize  himself  as  the 
"  son  of  God."  One  very  notable  thing  throughout  the 
centuries  has  been  the  power  of  the  really  great  men 
from  Moses  to  Lincoln,  from  Buddha  and  Confucius  to 
Mohammed  and  Luther,  from  Alexander  to  Bismarck, 
from  Homer  and  Horace  to  Tennyson,  Wordsworth,  and 
Lowell,  —  in  whatever  craft  their  art  consisted,  — to  find 
words  big  with  meaning.  The  mastery  of  words,  true 
literacy,  seems  almost  an  invariable  condition  of  genius. 
It  is  now  the  vogue  to  consider  a  child  who  can  pro- 
nounce his  words  a  good  reader.  Many  children,  how- 
ever, are  graduated  from  grammar  schools  as  having 
properly  completed  an  elementary  education  before  they 
can  pronounce  even  the  ordinary  words  of  newspaper 
articles  and  of  periodical  literature. 

We  know  well  that  such  children  have  not  yet  acquired 
the  capacity  to  understand  modern  civilization  or  to 


INTELLIGENCE  215 

express  themselves  in  its  terms.  And  yet  this  is  by  no 
means  the  worst  of  the  situation.  While  one  cannot 
understand  a  word  that  one  cannot  pronounce  with  at 
least  some  assurance  of  accuracy,  one  may  pronounce 
with  perfect  accuracy  many  words  that  one  does  not  un- 
derstand. Moreover,  one  may  understand  every  word  in 
a  sentence  and  yet  not  understand  the  sentence  ;  every 
sentence  in  a  paragraph,  and  yet  not  understand  the 
paragraph  ;  and  so  on  to  an  entire  book  or  to  an  entire 
literature. 

When  we  do  not  understand  words,  we  either  ignore 
them  or  read  into  them  false  meanings.  Similarly  with 
sentences.  So  simple  a  sentence  as  "The  truth  shall 
make  you  free"  has  been  read  meaning  "The  truth  of 
such-and-such  a  creed  shall  make  you  free  from  damna- 
tion "  or  "hell"  or  what  not.  In  this  book,  there  are 
many  sentences  that  are  incomprehensible  to  most  per- 
sons because  they  are  judgments  upon  notions,  gener- 
alizations employing  generalizing  words,  thoughts  at  their 
third  or  fourth  power:  for  this  reason,  if  for  no  other, 
few  will  read  it,  because  we  are  seldom  interested  in 
what  we  do  not  quickly  and  easily  understand.  Most 
highly  educated  young  men  and  women  have  gone  on 
with  their  education  partly  from  parental  compulsion, 
partly  from  desire  for  the  prestige  of  education,  partly 
from  hope  of  direct  reward,  and  but  little  from  pure 
desire  to  know  and  to  be  more.1 

This  matter  of  learning  the  meaning  of  words,  their 
connotation  and  their  denotation,  and  of  learning  the 
meaning  of  sentences  has  been  almost  entirely  neglected 
in  our  elementary  and  secondary  education.  The  college 
professor,  generally  scorned  as  a  pedagogical  ignoramus, 
is  far  more  apt  to  take  pains  that  his  students  shall  un- 
derstand the  words  and  the  argument  of  his  subject  than 
is  either  the  grammar  grade  or  the  high  school  teacher. 

1  "  Is  not  this  a  mystery  of  life  ? "    Ruskin,  Sesame  and  Lilies,  §  109. 


216  THE    EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

These  latter  need  to  go  to  school  to  the  primary  and  the 
collegiate  teachers.  It  is  in  the  grammar  grades  and 
in  the  high  school  that  the  wreck  of  youth,  voyaging 
upon  the  ocean  of  culture,  comes.  The  American  history 
or  the  geography,  the  Latin  grammar  or  the  geometry  is 
thrust  into  the  hands  of  the  pupil,  and  he  is  told  to  learn 
that  for  which  he  has  no  apperceiving  basis,  no  interest, 
and  no  desire.  The  practice  is  as  deplorable  as  it  is 
familiar.  No  wonder  that  boys  leave  school,  preferring 
"  to  go  to  work,"  or  that  girls  leave  school,  preferring  to 
help  their  mothers  and  to  get  ready  for  marriage. 

This  is  what  is  meant  by  "over-enrichment"  of  the 
grammar  school  course  and  by  "  cramming  "  in  the  high 
school.  Unfortunately,  a  vicious  circle  has  been  formed. 
Our  teachers  have  pursued  grammar  school  and  high 
school  studies,  and  have  then  been  prepared  directly  for 
primary  work  by  a  year  or  two  in  municipal  or  State 
normal  schools.  When  "  promoted  "  to  grammar  grade 
work,  they  forget  to  apply  the  primary  grade  principle  of 
preparing  the  minds  of  the  pupils  for  the  new  material, 
and  apply  instead  the  old  practice  of  requiring  book- 
study.1  The  very  books  themselves,  the  courses  of  study, 
and  the  syllabi  are  all  based  on  the  theory  that  what 
words  a  child  can  pronounce  he  can  understand ;  or  the 
even  worse  theory  that  what  words  he  should  be  able  to 
pronounce  he  does  understand. 

What  is  the  remedy  ?  The  kindergarten-and-primary 
and  the  university  principle  of  studying  and  explaining 
words  and  sentences.  It  seems  simple;  but  it  is  not 
regarded  as  obligatory  because  essential,  and  it  will  not 
be  so  regarded  for  many  a  year  to  come.  But  until  it  is 

1  Here  is  one  point  in  the  argument  for  college-trained  teachers  in  the 
grammar  grades.  They  have  not  learned  methods  and  devices  as  such, 
but  they  have  learned  from  their  college  teachers  to  reduce  their  topics  to 
their  elements,  of  which  an  important  feature  is  the  definition  and  exact 
use  of  words. 


INTELLIGENCE  217 

accepted,  we  shall  continue  to  have  a  nation  of  men  and 
of  women  who  read  the  headlines  of  newspapers  and 
books  of  fiction  written  in  easy  words  and  reciting  familiar 
deeds  and  motives  ;  in  short,  a  nation  really  illiterate  in 
respect  to  the  greater  matters  of  the  social  and  the 
personal  life. 

Nearly  all,  certainly  nine  in  ten,  Americans  of  West  or 
North  European  stocks  are  entirely  capable  of  attaining 
before  nineteen  years  of  age  the  literacy  of  high  school 
graduates.  It  is  entirely  a  matter  of  careful  hygiene,  of  good 
teaching,  and  of  continuance  at  school  because  of  those  good 
conditions. 

It  is  sometimes  debated  whether  one  may  become 
truly  efficient  without  being  truly  literate  or  literate 
without  being  efficient.  An  ugly  conclusion  seems  per- 
missible when  one  accepts  the  affirmatives  of  these  pro- 
positions, for  if  so,  why  not  train  one  class  of  persons 
as  literates  but  the  mass  as  workers  ?  Whole  civiliza- 
tions have  been  founded  upon  the  notion  that  the  few 
were  born  to  rule  and  the  many  to  serve.  But  if  there 
can  be  no  genuine  literacy  without  efficiency  and  no 
great  efficiency  without  literacy,  then  for  each  person 
the  one  is  as  important  as  the  other.  Upon  this  analysis, 
literacy  appears  essentially  and  fundamentally  a  matter 
of  observation  and  correct  reporting,  for  to  recognize  a 
word,  we  must  have  seen  it  in  all  its  literal  elements  and 
must  recall  it  promptly  and  perfectly.  Spelling  is  en- 
tirely a  matter  of  truthfulness  of  seeing  signs  and  hear- 
ing sounds,  together  with  accuracy  of  recall. 

Similarly,  it  has  been  debated  whether  there  can  be 
morality  without  efficiency,  with  an  even  uglier  conclusion, 
for  if  one  may  be  moral  without  being  good  to  do  some- 
thing, then  faith  may  be  divorced  from  works,1  and  if  one 
may  be  efficient  and  yet  immoral,  then  in  the  working 

1  James,  Epistle  ii,  14-26. 


2i8  THE    EVIDENCES    OF  EDUCATION 

world  of  men,  virtue  and  vice  are  matters  of  indiffer- 
ence. Indeed,  the  saint  becomes  ridiculous,  denying  him- 
self the  crowning  pleasure  of  a  will  freed  from  law  and 
become  absolute.1 

We  have  seen  that  literacy  is  not  the  narrow  matter  of 
ability  to  pronounce  words,  but  that  it  includes  the  far 
greater  matters  of  understanding  the  thought  in  lan- 
guage and  of  expressing  one's  own  thought.  The  concep- 
tion, therefore,  of  literacy  as  a  mode  of  education  greatly 
lengthens  the  perspective  of  our  thought.  While  we  have 
not  understood  literacy,  we  have  scarcely  tried  to  under- 
stand the  significance  of  efficiency  and  morality  as  also 
modes  of  education,  not  less  important  than  literacy. 
We  have  said  solemnly  and  almost  universally  that  the 
illiterate  is  likely  to  be  inefficient  and  immoral ;  and  yet 
we  have  not  aimed  at  efficiency  and  morality  as  educa- 
tional ends.  Our  reasons  for  the  neglect  of  these  three 
essentials,  a  generous  literacy,  a  worth-while  efficiency, 
and  a  complete  morality,  have  been  various.  Once  un- 
derstood, these  reasons  will  quickly  show  us  how  to  dis- 
pose of  the  attendant  difficulties.  We  have  trusted  to 
the  individual  to  bring  his  word-recognizing  literacy  into 
the  fruition  of  a  thought-resolving  literacy.  This  was  safe 
enough  in  ages  and  conditions  when  the  survival  of  the 
fittest  among  men  involved  the  removal  of  the  unfit  by 
natural  causes.  In  this  age  of  towns  and  cities,  the  in- 
ner motivation  of  men  is  weak  ;  and  millions  are  content 
to  carry  a  primary-educated  mind  through  life  without 
further  systematic  and  intentional  development.  The 
line  of  least  resistance  is  easier  for  the  citizen  than  for 
the  savage.  There  is  a  parasitic  sessilism  in  both  rural 
and  urban  modern  life  that  could  never  characterize  any 
kind  of  primitive  man. 

1  "  All  truth  by  itself  is  dead,  —  a  corpse.  It  is  alive  only  in  the  same 
way  as  my  lungs  are  alive  :  to  wit,  —  in  the  measure  of  my  own  vitality." 
Stirner  (Byington,  transl.),  The  Ego  and  His  Own. 


INTELLIGENCE  219 

The  failure  of  efficiency  to  appear  at  its  full  value  as 
an  ideal  in  education  and  in  life  is  due  to  the  inability  of 
educators  and  other  leaders  of  human  thought  and  prac- 
tice to  shut  themselves  out  of  their  view  of  the  world. 
Shakespeares  may  forbid  themselves,  may  prohibit  their 
own  personalities  from  appearing  in  the  foregrounds  of 
their  thoughts  ;  but  the  Shakespearean  type  is  seldom 
displayed  in  the  world.  Men  who  are  efficient  find  it  diffi- 
cult to  understand  why  others  are  inefficient  or,  what  is 
worse,  why  others  do  not  even  desire  to  be  efficient.  The 
workers  of  the  world  have  supposed  that  any  man  "with 
brains  "  would  desire  to  work  ;  they  have,  therefore,  set 
about  equipping  men  "with  brains,"  that  is,  with  liter- 
acy, whereas  in  point  of  fact  civilized  man,  weakly  be- 
gotten and  conceived,  overcrowded,  oversocialized,  and 
underfed,  is  more  apt  to  be  short  of  will  than  of  intelli- 
gence. We  may  as  well  recognize  now  as  later  that  as 
book  and  pen  are  necessary  for  literacy,  so  food  and  tool 
are  necessary  for  efficiency.  In  most  cases,  the  weak  and 
shifting  will  evidences  the  need  of  better  blood  and  of 
persistent  work. 

The  case  of  morality  is  somewhat  different.  We  have 
neglected  to  teach  this  as  an  essential  mode  of  education 
because  most  of  our  women  teachers  are  mere  girls  who 
have  not  experienced  the  sterner  realities  of  life,  because 
most  of  our  pupils  are  entirely  too  young  to  understand 
or  appreciate  the  moral  situations  of  men  and  women, 
because  we  have  a  too  fond  faith  that  one  who  attains 
the  school  virtues  and  the  boy  and  girl  virtues  is  there- 
fore certain  to  attain  the  virtues  of  maturer  life,  and  be- 
cause we  have  fondly  and  foolishly  supposed  that  an  "  edu- 
cated "  man  —  that  is,  one  who  can  read,  write,  cipher, 
locate  the  chief  cities  of  the  world,  tell  the  causes  of  the 
Revolutionary  War,  and  draw  a  box  in  perspective  —  is 
certain  to  be  moral  unless  he  is  a  "genius."  We  have 
understood,  of  course,  that  Napoleon,  Heine,  Shelley, 


220  THE    EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

Poe,  Webster,  and  Jay  Gould  were  "  geniuses "  and, 
therefore,  exempt  from  this  or  that  moral  law.  What  we 
have  refused  to  recognize,  perhaps  have  been  unable  to 
see,  is  that  the  great  majority  of  men  are  not  observant 
and  literate,  are  not  efficient,  are  not  moral.  And  we 
have  not  taken  the  trouble  to  inquire,  first,  whether  there 
is  any  connection  between  intelligence,  efficiency,  and 
morality,  and  whether  there  is  any  essential  relation  be- 
tween these  desiderata  and  education.  Let  us,  therefore, 
pursue  this  very  inquiry. 

We  have  seen  what  intelligence  is,  —  the  power  to  col- 
lect facts  and  to  interpret  them,  —  and  that,  in  civiliza- 
tion, literacy  is  an  essential  condition  of  intelligence. 
And  we  have  seen  what  literacy  is,  —  the  power  to  inter- 
pret the  thought  in  language  and  to  express  a  thought  by 
language.  What  is  efficiency  ?  The  power  to  make  some- 
thing out  of  other  things,  the  power  to  put  things  forth, 
the  power  to  do, — that  is,  creative,  constructive,  complete 
power.  It  is  a  power  resident  in  the  human  creature 
wherever  he  is  and  however  he  is  circumstanced ;  and 
he  now  happens  to  be  characteristically  in  civilization, 
in  society,  among  men.  The  modern  efficient  man  must 
be  a  doer  among  many  others,  a  laborer  in  society,  a  co- 
worker,  a  cooperator.  Izaak  Walton,  fisherman,  would 
probably  be  inefficient  in  modern  London,  and  Daniel 
Boone,  hunter,  in  New  York.  The  day  of  the  efficient 
independent  has  long  since  gone  by.  At  the  present 
time,  efficiency  connotes  society  and  civilization.  In 
other  words,  personal  efficiency  in  civilization  is  social 
efficiency. 

By  no  amount  of  travel  and  sight-seeing  can  a  tool- 
educated  deaf  mute  boy  be  made  as  efficient  as  he  can 
by  a  reasonable  training  in  reading  and  writing.  It  is  by 
language  that  one  enspheres  himself  in  humanity,  orien- 
tates himself  in  civilization,  measures  the  currents  and 
eddies  of  society.  One  may  be  industrious  without  being 


INTELLIGENCE  221 

efficient.  There  is  plenty  of  work  without  wages,  plenty 
of  opportunity  for  play,  which  is  activity  for  its  own 
sake,  plenty  of  effort  without  result,  plenty  of  trying 
without  making.  Efficiency  is  making  something  worth 
while.  It  has  a  concrete  aspect  as  of  things  definite. 
Abstract  efficiency,  efficiency  disembodied,  is  inconceiv- 
able. By  definition,  efficiency  is  economic  in  whole  or  in 
part.  He  who  is  efficient  modifies  the  social  structure  or 
influences  its  welfare.  He  shoots  at  a  mark  and  hits  it. 
He  is  a  man  among  men.  He  has  a  function  and  per- 
forms it.  As  for  the  inefficient,  whether  men  or  women, 
they  are  puppets,  ciphers,  "  nobodies,"  parasites,  paupers, 
"ne'er-do-weels,"  dependents. 

Efficiency  is  the  health  of  the  will,  inefficiency  its 
disease.  Contrary  to  what  seems  the  popular  and  even 
the  professional  view,  one  is  no  more  born  efficient  than 
one  is  born  literate  or,  for  that  matter,  moral.  But  while 
one  may  become  literate  without  proceeding  to  become 
efficient,  in  civilization  one  may  not  become  efficient 
without  first  being  literate.  To  know  how  to  do  things 
that  are  worth  while,  one  must  first  learn  by  conversa- 
tion and  by  reading  what  things  are  worth  while.  Of 
course,  language  is  the  medium  for  acquiring  this  know- 
ledge. The  larger  the  literacy  the  larger  is  the  possible 
efficiency,  for  one  may  not  be  socially  efficient  beyond 
the  range  of  his  knowledge.  Intelligence  is  conditioned 
by  literacy,  and  in  turn  conditions  efficiency. 

As  every  one  knows,  "  well-read  "  men  and  women  are 
sometimes  useless.  They  may  be  only  time-spenders, 
critics,  bookworms,  recluses.  The  mere  literate  is  al- 
ways in  peril  of  lunacy,  mind-wandering,  intellectual 
dissipation.  The  remedy  is  to  keep  the  child  quite  as 
much  at  observing,  doing,  and  making  as  at  reading  and 
speaking ;  and  there  is  no  other  remedy.  Eye-training 
and  ear-training  must  go  hand  in  hand  with  muscle- 
training  and  body-building  ;  and  must  not  outrun  them 


222  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

far.  Very  likely,  this  means  reducing  the  time  given  in 
school  to  reading,  to  history,  and  to  geography ;  very 
likely,  together  with  the  insistence  of  a  sound  pedagogy 
that  whatever  is  studied  must  be  understood,  this  means 
a  considerable  reduction  of  the  amount  of  reading,  of 
history,  and  of  geography  to  be  acquired  in  the  ele- 
mentary school  course;  but  the  powers  to  observe  and  to 
do  and  skill  in  observing  and  in  doing  are  cheaply  bought 
at  the  price  of  losing  some  book-knowledge,  too  often 
essentially  beyond  the  comprehension  of  the  inefficient. 

We  must  have  teachers  sufficiently  self-alienated,  suf- 
ficiently bred  away  from  the  school  and  familiar  with 
the  world,  to  understand  what  efficiency  is,  and  why  it 
is  exactly  as  essential  as  intelligence.  It  is  not  enough, 
even  in  the  teacher,  to  be  intelligent ;  it  is  necessary 
also  to  be  efficient.  But  the  professional  efficiency  of 
the  teacher  is  at  best  a  narrow  matter  compared  with 
the  efficiency  that  should  characterize  the  man  or  woman 
with  work  to  do  in  the  larger  world  outside  of  the  school. 
We  must  have  not  only  courses  of  study  for  the  cultiva- 
tion of  the  intellect,  but  also  courses  of  exercises  for  the 
cultivation  of  the  will  and  of  the  body,  which  is  the 
instrument  for  realizing  the  will.  These  courses  must  be 
as  systematic,  as  progressive,  and  as  prominent  as  the 
so-called  culture  studies.  The  price  of  efficiency  in  time 
and  in  intensity  of  effort  is  quite  as  great  as  is  the  price 
of  intelligence.  For  the  complete  education,  the  second 
cost  must  be  added  to  the  first. 

Because  the  schools  do  not  deliberately  intend  to  teach 
efficiency  is  one  reason  why  so  many  parents  do  not  re- 
gret to  see  their  children  leave  school  "  to  go  to  work." 
A  boy  of  fifteen  should  feel  that  he  goes  to  work  quite 
as  much  when  he  goes  to  school  as  when  he  goes  to  the 
mill  or  to  the  mine,  to  the  farm  or  to  the  store,  to  the 
office  or  to  the  shop,  to  the  railroad  or  to  the  factory. 
Of  course,  school  work  will  never  be  primarily  for  the 


INTELLIGENCE  223 

purpose  of  earning  money,  though  it  is  conceivable  that 
in  years  to  come  some  school  products  may  be  commer- 
cially valuable.  There  is  no  good  reason  why  children 
and  youth  should  be  trained  in  economic  parasitism.  In 
fact,  so  to  train  them  is  to  imperil  their  desire  for  eco- 
nomic independence  through  life.  Of  course,  in  the  pre- 
sent economic  regime,  most  children  and  some  wives 
and  mothers  are  economic  parasites,  forever  reaping  and 
never  sowing.  It  is  plain  that  economic  parasitism  in 
luxury  even  beyond  comfort  is  the  ideal  of  millions,  male 
and  female,  in  this  age,  and  small  wonder  that  it  is.  A 
score  of  reasons  might  be  given.  Of  these,  I  cite  but  one, 
—  the  others  belonging  rather  in  works  on  economics  or 
in  novels.  This  reason  is  educational.  Our  children  are 
being  brought  up  by  mothers  and  by  women  teachers, 
all  of  whom  are  necessarily  consumers,  but  most  of  whom 
are  apparently  non-producers.1  The  fact  of  childhood 
tends  to  become  the  ideal  of  manhood  and  womanhood. 
Last  and  highest  is  morality.  It  is  sometimes  said 
that  the  ignorant  man  may  be  moral  ;  and  even  that  the 
inefficient  may  be  moral.  We  have  presented  to  us  the 
pathetic,  appealing  picture  of  the  ignorant  old  woman, 
nodding  over  her  Bible,  as  the  type  of  morality.  In  life, 
it  is  not  so.  Feebleness  and  ignorance  limit  and  obscure 
true  morality.  In  a  great  civilization,  morality  is  inevit- 
ably a  complicated  matter.  To  say  this  is  not  to  say 
that  the  old  lady  who  loves  her  Bible  is  not  moral.  She 
is  probably  moral  within  the  limits  of  her  intelligence 
and  .of  her  power  to  do  good.  But  in  the  great  world  of 
action,  where  Nations  are  ruled,  Syndicates  are  operated, 
Churches  are  organized,  Schools  are  directed,  Wars  are 
waged,  and  Lands  are  peopled,  every  act  should  be  not 
only  wise  and  energetic  but  also  righteous ;  and  the 

1  This  regime  is  temporary.  The  signs  of  its  passing  are  all  about  us. 
Some  signs  are  good,  some  are  evil.  The  worst  of  them  is  the  forcing  of 
mothers  and  children  into  the  mills  to  force  out  the  fathers. 


224  THE  EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

righteousness  must  be  equal  to  the  intelligence  and  the 
energy.  Morality  in  great  matters  looks  simple  only  to 
the  simple-minded,  who  are  not  competent  to  determine 
them. 

To  illustrate :  It  is  the  verdict  of  history  that  the  course 
pursued  by  Abraham  Lincoln  in  regard  to  slavery  during  the 
War  of  Secession  was  the  only  righteous  course ;  and  yet  at 
the  time  most  moralists  reprobated  that  course.  The  truth  is 
that  only  an  able,  strong-willed  man  in  the  Presidency,  with 
all  the  knowledge  given  by  that  vast  office  and  with  a  sense 
of  responsibility  proportioned  to  that  office,  could  know  what 
was  right  and  what  was  wrong  in  the  direction  of  national  af- 
fairs in  that  crisis.  As  every  competent  person  now  agrees, 
there  was  apparently  not  one  other  man  in  America  at  the 
time  who  could  have  brought  the  Union  through  that  crisis,  — 
an  almost  unanimous  opinion  valuable  as  testimony  to  the 
fact  that  morality  is  the  apex  of  the  pyramid,  resting  upon 
efficiency,  which  in  turn  rests  upon  intelligence. 

We  must  clearly  discriminate  between  the  morality 
chat  lies  within  the  range  of  a  narrowly  limited  intelli- 
gence and  within  the  strength  of  an  incompletely  efficient 
will,  and  the  morality  that  is  nearly  or  quite  coterminous 
with  a  large  intelligence  and  able  to  run  pari passu  with 
a  quick  and  strong  efficiency.  We  do  not  condemn  as  bad 
one  who  is  as  good  as  he  knows  how  to  be  and  as  he  has 
the  energy  to  be.  We  are  ready  to  forgive  the  ignorant 
and  the  feeble  for  their  narrow  and  inactive  morality. 
But  it  is  our  duty  to  ourselves  and  to  society  not  to  sup- 
pose, and  not  to  speak  and  to  act  as  though  we  supposed, 
that  the  morality  of  the  dull  and  the  weak  is  as  noble 
and  as  valuable  as  the  morality  of  the  intelligent  and 
the  strong.  A  particular  society  soon  perishes  when  the 
standard  of  morals  of  the  majority  is  considered  as  the 
absolute  standard  for  all.  The  excuse  is  sometimes  of- 
fered by  intelligent  and  vigorous  men  that  their  morality 
is  as  good  as  that  of  their  neighbors.  Those  who  offer 


INTELLIGENCE  225 

and  those  who  accept  that  excuse  forget  that  "  unto 
whomsoever  much  is  given,  of  him  shall  be  much  re- 
quired."1 

It  is  this  excuse  that  is  offered  by  the  great  spoliators  of 
American  economic  life.  Their  apologists  say  :  "  They  are 
simply  doing  what  you  and  I  would  do,  were  we  in  their 
places."  To  assert  this  is  to  admit  two  postulates,  and  I  for 
one  will  not  admit  either.  The  first  postulate  is  that  all  men 
of  ability  and  energy  aspire  to  wealth  and  power,  irrespective 
of  the  morality  of  the  methods  employed  to  attain  them.  The 
second  is  that  what  is  done  in  a  small  way  is  equally  good  or 
innocent  when  done  in  a  large  way.  The  first  makes  inex- 
plicable the  poets,  artists,  physicians,  journalists,  professors, 
educators,  and  the  thousand  others  who  in  each  generation 
aspire  neither  to  wealth  nor  to  power,  —  inexplicable,  that  is, 
unless  we  are  ready  to  agree  that  wealth  and  power  are  more 
to  be  desired  than  love  and  art,  knowledge  and  consciousness 
of  good  service  well  done.  The  second  denies  the  category 
of  thought  that  "  a  change  in  quantity  makes  a  change  in 
quality." 2  To  take  a  pin  may  be  harmless  ;  but  to  take  a  case 
of  many  packages  of  pins  may  well  be  crime. 

The  sociological  view,  therefore,  of  morality  is  appar- 
ently not  the  view  of  a  certain  familiar  type  of  dogmatic 
theology.  As  God  judges,  the  weak  and  ignorant  man 
who  does  his  best  may  be  as  good  as  the  strong  and 
intelligent  man  who  does  better.  But  society  does  and 
should  value  as  the  highest  morality  the  life  of  one  who, 
being  wise  and  vigorous,  conforms  as  closely  as  he  may 
to  the  laws  of  social  righteousness. 

To  be  specific :  A  weak  and  ignorant  man  may  know  that 
his  party  is  corrupt,  that  the  candidates  are  incompetent  or 
venal,  and  that  the  measures  are  generally  bad ;  but  he  be- 
lieves that  the  other  party  is  worse  and  that  at  any  rate  party 

1  Jesus,  Luke,  Gospel  xii,  48. 

2  The  contrary  is  a  familiar  fallacy.   Cf.  Hibben,  "  Popular  Fallacies," 
North  American  Review,  April  19,  1907,  pp.  832-38. 


226  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

loyalty  is  an  honorable  personal  characteristic,  an  evidence  of 
being  a  good  citizen.  Another  man,  strong  and  intelligent, 
may  know  or  believe  all  that  the  first  one  does  ;  and,  instead 
of  voting  the  straight  ticket,  quietly  scratch  a  name  here  and 
there,  hoping  partly  to  secure  better  men  by  the  substitutions 
and  partly  to  rebuke  his  party  managers  for  poor  or  bad 
selections;  but  all  the  while  he  knows  that  he  ought  to  have 
gone  to  the  primaries  and  to  have  fought  the  "  slate,"  and, 
if  defeated,  ought  to  have  fought  the  whole  party  publicly, 
perhaps  even  to  the  extent  of  assisting  in  the  election  of 
independent  candidates. 

With  the  intelligent  man  who  is  no  more  than  this, 
whatever  is  true  is  accepted.  With  the  efficient-intelli- 
gent man,  whatever  is  accepted  truth  is  urgent.  With 
the  moral-efficient-intelligent  man,  whatever  is  urgent 
and  accepted  truth  is  mandatory,  obligatory,  imperative, 
necessary  ;  and  he  obeys  such  truth  as  a  duty. 

The  business  of  culture  is  to  find  and  to  save  the 
truth.  The  business  of  education  is  to  bring  men  to 
knowledge  of  the  truth,  to  acceptance  of  it,  and  to  obe- 
dience to  it.  The  record  of  culture  in  its  business  is 
better  than  the  record  of  education.  In  nearly  every 
generation  of  civilized  peoples,  there  have  been  a  few 
men,  if  not  many,  who  have  understood  the  mission  of 
culture  and  who  have  followed  it.  But  though  education 
has  had  apostles  in  various  lands  at  particular  periods, 
until  the  rise  of  representative  democracy  in  govern- 
ment and  of  evolution  in  science,  education,  as  theory 
and  practice,  science  and  art,  has  not  had  an  integral, 
self-conscious  existence,  nor  has  it  had  general  recogni- 
tion either  among  the  masses  or  among  the  wise.  For 
want,  therefore,  of  internal  development  and  of  unitary 
force  and  for  want  of  public  approval  and  support,  educa- 
tion has  scarcely  undertaken  all  of  its  special  business. 

In  books  on  education  and  in  reports  of  superintendents, 
there  will  be  found  expositions  of  efficiency  and  of  morality 


INTELLIGENCE  227 

as  educational  ends  and  appeals  for  their  recognition  ;  but  in 
these  academic  discussions,  there  have  been  two  unfortunate 
tendencies.  Of  these,  the  first  tendency  has  been  to  translate 
both  morality  and  efficiency  in  terms  of  each  other  and  to  say, 
therefore,  that  the  literate  will  perforce  be  efficient  and  moral. 
Such  translation  amounts  to  a  sophistical  exchange  of  defini- 
tions. The  second  tendency,  essentially  and  logically  contra- 
dictory to  the  first,  yet  frequently  presented  collaterally,  has 
been  to  assert  that  literacy,  efficiency,  and  morality  have 
the  same  educational  motives,  but  that  they  may  not  be  com- 
pletely achieved  by  the  same  educational  methods.  This  leads 
to  the  employment  of  a  few,  as  it  were,  "  extra  "  methods  to 
supplement  the  deficiencies  of  the  standard  methods  for  the 
achievement  of  literacy-efficiency-morality  considered  as  one 
triune  whole.  But  literacy-efficiency-morality  are  not  a  triune 
whole,  of  which  the  fields  of  each  of  the  three  are  coter- 
minous and  therefore  capable  of  being  reached  and  occupied 
synchronously ;  but  the  series  should  be  intelligence-efficiency- 
morality,  a  progressive  series,  of  which  the  first,  a  larger 
matter  than  literacy,  is  the  pathway  to  the  second  ;  and  the 
second  to  the  third ;  while  the  third  is  the  final,  the  real,  and 
the  necessary  goal  of  elementary  education. 

It  remains  to  show  by  what  methods  and  of  what  ma- 
terials intelligence,  efficiency,  and  morality  are  consti- 
tuted. The  perils  of  any  civilization  may  be  enumerated 
as  three.  The  first  is  that  its  society  will  have  an  insuf- 
ficient number  of  intelligent  men  and  women  who  com- 
prehend its  nature,  purposes,  and  activities  to  preserve 
its  culture  without  loss.  Once  net  losses  set  in  because 
of  too  general  ignorance,  the  doom  of  that  civilization 
is  writ  in  the  stars.  The  second  peril  is  that  its  society 
will  have  an  insufficient  number  of  efficient  men  and 
women  to  perform  skillfully  its  economic  and  cultural 
work  and  to  preserve  the  per  capita  wealth  and  the  aver- 
age culture  undiminished.  Once  the  cultural  tone  is 
lowered  and  the  per  capita  wealth  decreased,  the  doom 
is  writ,  and  it  will  come  sooner  than  when  only  the 


228  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

knowledge  of  culture  is  reduced.  The  third  peril  is  that 
its  society  will  contain  an  insufficient  number  of  persons 
who  exemplify  in  themselves  and  enforce  in  others  the 
standard  morals  to  preserve  the  cultural  arts,  the  eco- 
nomic property,  and  the  social  habits  unadulterated. 
Once  cultural  skill,  private  and  public  wealth  per  capita, 
and  morals  suffer  injury  to  their  essential  nature,  the 
doom  of  that  civilization  cometh  fast.  To  increase  intel- 
ligence is  good ;  to  develop  efficiency  is  excellent ;  but 
to  elevate  morals  is  necessary.  Increasing  ignorance  is 
ominous  ;  declining  efficiency  is  frightful ;  but  lowering 
morality  is  fatal. 

Omens,  fears,  prophecies  of  doom  pass  unheeded  when 
the  civilization  is  on  the  wane.  The  disposition  of  a 
community  of  people  to  be  joyous  despite  warnings, 
and  to  be  callous  amid  miseries,  is  evidence  that  these 
diseases  of  ignorance,  indolence,  and  evil  —  the  anti- 
themes  of  intelligence,  efficiency,  and  morality  —  have 
passed  the  stage's  of  cure  by  normal  process  of  internal 
change.1 

Scholarship  is  a  larger  matter  than  "  literary  culture  " 
or  "knowledge  of  books"  or  "learning,"  all  of  which 
terms  are  but  different  modes  of  expressing  the  results 
of  the  study  of  print.  It  implies  these  results  and  also 
working  efficiency  and  disciplined  morality,  for  despite 
much  loose  thinking  and  much  careless  talking,  we  know 
that  unless  the  learned  man  is  industrious  and  moral,  he 
will  not  long  pass  for  a  genuine  scholar  in  the  world  of 
unlearned  but  nevertheless  critical  men.  The  common 
sense  of  the  many  has  maintained  the  truth  ignored  by 
the  particular  few  who  upon  attaining  literacy  have  im- 
agined their  scholarship  complete,  for  the  many  have 
looked  upon  the  "mere  scholar  "  scornfully,  styling  him 

1  It  is  precisely  this  general  condition  to-day  in  Russia  that  causes  his- 
torically trained  critics  most  anxiety. 


INTELLIGENCE  229 

"bookworm  "  or  "unworldly"  or  idler,  and  have  taken  his 
opinions  in  "practical  affairs"  ("real  life")  as  but  bab- 
bling. Sometimes  the  many  reproach  the  mere  scholar, 
(that  is,  one  whose  education  has  not  gone  beyond  lit- 
eracy) as  negligent  of  opportunities ;  "  dead  to  the 
world,"  they  call  him.  Their  remedy  has  been  the  ad- 
vice "to  go  and  do  something,"  "to  get  to  work,"  to  stir 
about  among  men.  They  do  not  know  that  the  real 
trouble  with  the  literate  who  is  that  but  not  more  is 
subjective,  characteristic,  and  in  adult  life  almost  always 
incurable. 

This  real  trouble  may  be  stated  in  various  ways.  It  is 
ignorance  of  the  real  world.  It  is  literacy  established 
upon  very  slight  observation  of  natural  things.  It  is 
lack  of  motor  power.  It  is  inhibition  of  the  muscular  or 
nervous  reactions  of  thought.  It  is  overdevelopment  of 
reflection,  which  is,  of  course,  impossible  without  some 
inhibition.  It  is  knowing  words  but  not  things  ;  knowing 
without  doing,  so  much  knowing  that  doing  has  become 
impossible  without  extraordinary  stimulation.1  It  is  loss 
of  the  sense  of  the  practical.  It  is  taking  life  as  a  day- 
dream. It  is  in  substance  and  in  spirit  denial  of  reality. 
It  is  often  stoicism.  It  is  flabbiness  or  vacuity  of  will. 
And  whatever  it  is,  it  is  always  stated  popularly  in  terms 
of  the  next  higher  quality,  —  efficiency.  But  the  popular 
statement  is  superficial,  for  the  "mere  literate"  is  always 
deficient  also  in  the  fundamental  quality  of  power-to- 
observe.  The  literacy  that  does  nothing,  that  leads  to  no 
results,  that  does  not  eventuate  in  acts,  that  is  unob- 
servant, inefficient,  and  unpractical,  is  in  the  opinion  of 
the  working  world  contemptible,  for  it  is  usually  too  indo- 
lent even  to  express  itself  beyond  the  passive  manifest- 
ation of  indolence  in  the  character. 

1  "  The  true  end  of  knowing  is  doing."  Balliet,  Address,  Mass.  Teach- 
ers' Asso.,  quoted  by  O'Shea,  Dynamic  Factors  in  Education,  p.  61. 


230  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

Mere  literacy  must  be  discriminated  from  that  strange 
dualism  occasionally  manifested,  when  the  knowledge  gained 
by  reading  and  perhaps  even  by  conversation  remains  remote 
from  action,  and  its  relation  to  expression  is  never  observed 
or  at  least  never  obeyed. 

A  man  may  "  make  his  living  "  as  a  persistently  traditional, 
narrow-visioned  farmer,  practicing  neither  rotation  of  crops 
nor  intensive  agriculture,  never  improving  the  breed  of  his 
cattle  or  painting  his  buildings,  scorning  modern  machinery 
and  business  methods,  and  scarcely  suspecting  the  applica- 
bility to  his  own  affairs  of  the  very  knowledge  that  he  has 
been  acquiring  in  books  and  magazines  read  in  hours 
when  he  should  have  been  at  work  upon  the  farm.  He  is 
satisfied  when  the  crops  have  paid  his  taxes,  pew  rent,  and 
clothing  bills  and  left  him  leisure  to  be  literary.  The  discus- 
sion of  politics  is  a  matter  of  literacy ;  and  this  discussion 
has  cost  many  a  farmer  the  competence  that  the  efficient 
secure  for  old  age. 

The  perfect  man  would  be  as  good  as  he  is  efficient, 
and  as  efficient  as  he  is  intelligent ;  and  his  intelligence 
would  be  adequate  to  the  problem  of  his  environment. 
His  knowledge  has  been  perfected  by  use ;  and  the  use 
has  been  governed  by  a  kind  heart.  But,  as  we  shall  see 
later,  this  "  kindness  of  heart  "  is  no  mere  matter  of 
whim  or  of  occasion,  but  a  wholeness  of  wisdom  actuated 
by  love  for  one's  neighbors  and  limited  by  a  just  self- 
respect. 

The  beginning  of  this  process  of  complete  education 
must  be  upon  principles  capable  of  bringing  the  scholar 
to  this  goal  of  perfectness.  Until  we  realize  fully  and 
clearly  that,  since  we  are  all  finite  (and  therefore  certain 
in  this  earthly  life  to  be  imperfect  even  in  old  age  after 
all  our  opportunities),  our  morality  must  always  be  less 
than  our  efficiency  and  our  efficiency  less  than  our  intel- 
ligence, and  that  our  intelligence  is  established  upon  our 
observation  of  reality  and  conditioned  by  our  literacy;  we 
shall  not  be  able  to  see  the  true  method  of  education. 


INTELLIGENCE  231 

Pyramids  of  different  heights  may  be  erected  upon  a  given 
base.  Pyramids  of  various  slopes  may  be  truncated  at  any 
height. 

Morality  .  .  . 
Efficiency  .  . 
Intelligence  .  . 


a.  The  intelligent  man.  b.  The  intelligent-efficient  man. 

c.  The  intelligent-efficient-moral  man. 

Not  only  is  it  true  of  man  as  a  whole,  an  entity,  an 
individual,  that  his  morality  cannot  be  greater  than  his 
efficiency,  nor  his  efficiency  greater  than  his  intelligence, 
and  that  intelligence  precedes  and  establishes  the  foun- 
dations of  efficiency  and  that  efficiency  is  the  foundation 
of  morality  ;  but  it  is  also  true  of  every  personal  habit  or 
quality  (the  force  of  morality)  that  it  is  the  resultant  of 
acts  that  are  themselves  resultants  of  intelligence.  We 
see  or  feel  or  think ;  then  act  ;  last  become. 

Here  rises  the  great  problem  of  habit  in  education,  a 
problem  scarcely  considered  as  yet  by  either  educators  or 
psychologists.1  It  is  more  than  a  problem  :  it  is  an  entire 

1  I  gave  four  years  in  a  seminar  of  graduate  students  to  the  psycho- 
logy of  habit ;  and  saw  in  the  end  that  all  the  foundation  work  in  physi- 
ological psychology  and  all  the  structural  work  in  psychology  proper 
as  related  to  habit  must  yet  be  done. 

The  relations  of  habit  to  instinct ;  motive  and  habit;  the  physical  foun- 
dations of  habit  (psychophysical  parallelism) ;  the  inherited  habits  ;  habit 
as  limitation  to  education ;  heredity  and  social  progress ;  evolution  and 
habit;  the  establishment  and  the  overthrow  of  habit;  innovations,  re- 
forms, revolutions ;  the  conflicts  of  the  virtues  (the  moral  habits) ;  the 
historical  causes  and  processes  of  the  vices  (the  so-called  immoral  habits) ; 
the  evaluation  of  habits  in  education,  in  morals,  in  religion,  in  politics, 
and  in  economics,  and  of  the  fashions  of  society  ;  the  social  milieu  ;  the 
relation  of  habit  to  progress,  personal  and  social ;  habit  and  free  will ; 


232  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

mathematic,  suggested  here  and  there  by  a  monograph 
or  a  chapter,  but  some  day  to  be  the  subject  of  treatises 
and  tomes.  Morality  is  a  summation  or  harmony  of 
habits,  a  correlation  between  personal  and  social  habits. 

Articulate  speech  has  transformed  the  animal  into  the 
human.  Recorded  speech,  that  greatest  of  all  human 
inventions,  has  made  the  human  into  the  citizen.  The 
literate  is  he  to  whom  or  by  whom  thought  may  be 
conveyed  by  letters.  In  civilization,  literature  (thought 
in  letters)  is  far  more  important  than  oral  language, 
aurally  perceived.  Literacy,  therefore,  becomes  almost 
synonymous  with  intelligence  or  knowledge.  The  actual 
amount  and  the  quality  of  intelligence  actually  secured 
without  the  use  of  letters  or  phonetic  sounds  are  almost 
negligible,  though  this  should  not  be  so.  The  exceptions 
at  best  no  more  than  point  out  the  rule.  The  principle  of 
learning  by  reading  is  so  familiar  as  almost  to  be  ignored, 
—  like  the  sky  and  the  sun,  which  so  few  notice. 

A  few  schools  have  recently  adopted  silent  reading  as  a  reg- 
ular daily  exercise.  In  truth,  all  reading  is  silent.  The  oral 
reading  is  mere  repetition,  second  edition  reproduction  of  the 

the  genius  ;  the  mediocre ;  the  idiot ;  the  criminal ;  the  saint ;  the  hero  ; 
the  coward ;  the  man  of  peace  and  the  man  of  war ;  language ;  sex ;  na- 
tionality ;  race ;  religion  ;  poverty ;  wealth  ;  culture ;  character  ;  custom, 
law,  and  political  freedom  ;  these  are  but  a  few  of  the  thousand  obvious 
topics  of  the  psychology  of  habit. 

It  is  a  surprising  fact  that  for  so  many  ages,  in  so  many  nations,  habit 
should  have  been  a  topic  upon  every  tongue  and  that  habits  should  have 
been  so  closely  and  frequently  discussed,  and  that  the  act  of  thinking, 
feeling,  willing  should  have  formed  the  topic  of  a  great  new  science,  while 
habit,  the  second  power  of  the  act,  should  have  been  so  uniformly  sub- 
ordinate, if  noted  at  all.  Cf.  Morgan,  Habit  and  Instinct ;  Radestock, 
Habit  in  Education  ;  Kulpe,  Outlines  of  Psychology,  pp.  41  ff. ;  Baldwin, 
Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations  ;  vol.  ii  of  Mental  Development,  pp.  35  f . ; 
Bagley,  The  Educative  Process,  chapter  vii ;  O'Shea,  Education  as  Ad- 
justment ;  Patten,  Heredity  and  Social  Progress ;  Andrews,  "  Habit," 
American  Journal  of  Psychology,  1903,  pp.  121-149;  James,  Principles  of 
Psychology,  vol.  i,  pp.  104-127  ;  Johnson,  "  Practice  and  Habit,"  Studies, 
Yale  Psychological  Laboratory,  vi,  1898,  pp.  51-103. 


INTELLIGENCE  233 

real  reading,  which  is  a  secret,  personal,  voiceless  intellection. 
The  familiar  school  reading  aloud  is  elocution.  The  series  of 
reading  processes  that  bring  the  mind  forward  to  a  generous 
literacy  seems  to  advance  as  follows  :  recognition  of  the  lit- 
eral sign  as  associated  with  a  sound  and  recollection  (or 
interpretation)  of  the  sound  as  meaning  something;  by  sup- 
pression of  consciousness  of  the  sound,  immediate  recognition 
of  the  sign  as  meaning  something  ;  relating  the  meanings  of 
the  signs  in  association  ;  by  suppression  of  the  consciousness 
of  the  signs,  recollecting  or  interpreting  the  relations  im- 
mediately as  some  mode  or  form  of  thought ;  associating 
intelligently  the  recollections  and  interpretations  present  in 
consciousness  ;  and,  finally,  critically  thinking  over  or  beyond 
these  associations  of  memory  and  of  reason  and  becoming 
thereby  free  in  thought.  Such  is  literacy. 

A  universal  language,  employing  uniform,  certain,  and  de- 
finite phonic  signs,  one  only  for  each  sound,  and  one  sound 
only  for  each  sign,  and  permitting  no  homonyms,  is  a  literary 
desideratum,  apparently  far,  far  off,  perhaps  never  to  be  real- 
ized.1 This  consideration  introduces  two  of  the  four  great 
questions  of  language,  phonics  and  polyglottism,  —  the  others 
being  grammar  and  definition.  We  hear  and  think  so  much 
of  spelling  that  we  often  fail  to  remember  that  in  the  Semitic, 
Greek,  Latin,  Teutonic,  and  Slavic  languages  the  foundations 
are  phonetic.  Spelling,  indeed,  belongs  rather  to  the  field  of 
efficiency  than  of  literacy,  for  all  the  spelling  requisite  for 
literacy  is  enough  to  permit  recognition  of  the  sound  in  the 
word.  This  has  been  evidenced  by  a  great  array  of  American 
humorists  whose  "bizness,"  "tuf,"  "  Geroosalem,"  and  "crit- 
tur  "  have  served  to  convey  not  only  the  sound  but  the  entire 
thought  and  a  little  more.  In  that  "  little  more,"  the  humor 
has  often  consisted. 

The  literate  must  learn  some  sounds  that  name  things, 
qualities,  and  acts,  and  others  that  suggest  relations. 

1  Such  a  universal  language  is  not  to  be  confused  with  an  international 
language,  which  is  possible  and  practicable,  if  not  probable.  The  pro- 
spects of  Esperanto  now  look  bright ;  but  neither  Esperanto  nor  Volapiik 
nor  Idiom  Neutral  is  a  truly  phonetic  speech. 


234 

Because  we  remember  our  primers,  this  seems  much  sim- 
pler than  it  is. 

"  The  big  cat  is  old  and  white  "  seems  very  easy  to  the  lit- 
erate adult  mind.  But  consider  it.  The  correct  pronunciation 
of  "  the  "  before  a  consonant  is  a  matter  of  rule  and  of  prac- 
tice. The  word  itself  is  technical  and  unnecessary,  though 
perhaps  advantageous.  Greece  had  its  several  articles,  Rome 
none.  "  Big  "  recalls  space  and  relation,  both  of  which  ideas 
are  quite  vague  to  children.  "  Cat  "  is  easy,  —  a  mere  name 
of  an  object,  —  and  yet  to  read  well  one  must  recall  the  type, 
if  not  the  particular  object,  the  concept,  if  not  the  percept. 
"  Is "  also  involves  relation,  expressing  here  a  synthetic- 
analytic  judgment,  synthetic  as  to  the  union  of  cat  and  of  age 
and  whiteness,  analytic  as  to  the  isolation  of  great  age  from 
time  and  of  whiteness  from  general  color.  Oldness  and  white- 
ness are  terms  involving  interpretation  of  experience.  "  And  " 
is  a  term  of  relation  by  union. 

A  more  difficult  sentence  reveals  at  once  the  essential 
language  difficulty.  "  While  the  practical  application  of  mere 
ideology  brings  the  State  into  the  acute  crisis  of  political  fever, 
mere  empiricism  produces  chronic  maladies,  making  the  bright 
sword  of  justice  rust,  enfeebling  the  health  of  government,  and 
weakening  the  moral  vigor  of  society."  l  Here  we  have  words 
whose  phonic  elements  are  difficult  to  discover  and  to  articu- 
late conventionally,  —  "practical,"  "ideology,"  "crisis," 
"  empiricism,"  "  chronic,"  "  sword,"  "  government,"  "  society." 
"  While  "  expresses  a  relation  very  difficult  to  comprehend. 
"  State  "  is  a  name,  it  is  true  ;  and  yet  it  is  a  name  of  singu- 
lar difficulty  to  define  or  even  to  understand.  "  Empiricism," 
"  justice,"  "  moral ;  "  these  are  words  more  familiar  than  "  ide- 
ology," yet  far  more  complex  and  troublesome.  To  read  this 
sentence,  one  needs  a  long  schooling  and  a  large  experience 
in  life.  I  question  whether  there  is  in  America  a  single  youth 
under  eighteen  years  of  age  who  at  sight  can  read  the  sen- 
tence and  define  every  term.  Not  one  in  ten  of  our  annual 
college  graduates  could  read  it  intelligently  upon  Commence- 

1  Bluntschli,  Theory  of  the  State  (Oxford  translation),  p.  6. 


INTELLIGENCE  235 

ment  Day.  The  sentence  expresses  admirably  the  antithesis 
between  revolution  and  bureaucracy,  political  theory  and 
political  practice,  ideal  government  and  government  as  it 
generally  and  really  is.  In  truth,  it  requires  "  learning  "  and  a 
political  experience  to  understand  the  thought.  The  essential 
language-difficulty  is  at  once  revealed  as  being  the  discovery  of 
the  thought  contained  in  the  words  colligated  in  sentences.  To 
read  is  to  find  in  the  signs  of  language  their  thought-content. 

The  second  question  is  the  profitableness  of  polyglot- 
tism.  Why  should  one  who  has  learned  or  is  learning 
one  language  endeavor  to  acquire  another  ?  We  often 
talk  of  the  desirability  of  one  universal  language.  Is 
not,  then,  the  acquisition  of  a  second  language  entirely 
a  utilitarian  consideration  ?  Two  valid  reasons  may  be 
given  for  knowing  well  at  least  two  languages.  He  who 
knows  but  one  imperfect  language  with  greatest  difficulty 
knows  even  that  or  himself  as  a 'thinker  in  that  lan- 
guage.1 He  cannot  know  its  philological  history,  the 
ancient  connotations  of  its  roots  and  suffixes  and  pre- 
fixes, the  causes  and  tendencies  of  its  grammar.  He  can- 
not rethink  his  thoughts  in  a  strange  form  of  words  and 
by  the  contrast  discover  himself,  his  personality,  in  them. 
The  reason  why  the  whole  value  of  self-alienation  by 
the  study  of  a  foreign  language  is  not  familiar  to  every 
one,  though  it  is  familiar  to  some,  is  because  so  few  ever 
really  and  completely  acquire  a  second  language.2 

The  second  valid  reason  for  the  genuine  acquisition  of 
a  second  language  is  the  definition  of  thought.  The 
micrometer  of  the  vernier  upon  the  theodolite  of  the 
surveyor  measures  with  minute  accuracy  by  its  method 
of  comparing  the  same  space  divided  into  tenths  and 
again  into  ninths,  the  difference  being  a  hundredth.  It 
locates  with  extreme  precision  the  true  zero,  the  central 

1  "  A  man  who  knows  no  foreign  languages  knows  nothing  of  his 
own."  Goethe,  Sayings  in  Prose. 

1  Trench,  The  Study  of  Words  ;  Hamerton,  The  Intellectual  Life. 


236  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

or  focal  point.  So  with  words.  One  who  can  compare 
intelligently  speech  with  its  Latin  synonym  lingua,  or 
beautiful  with  its  Greek  synonym  KaAo'?,  or  time-spirit 
with  its  German  equivalent  Zeit-Geist,  or  good  evening 
with  its  Italian  equivalent  buona  sera,  or  God  with  the 
Jahveh  of  the  Hebrews,  can  enter  upon  the  ideas  in- 
volved and  expressed,  and  he  can  compare  their  limits. 
Every  word  has  its  shades  of  meaning,  its  nuances. 
When  synonymous  words  of  different  languages  are  com- 
pared, these  shades  of  meaning  become  as  clear  as  the 
corona  of  the  sun  in  a  total  eclipse  by  the  moon. 

One  word,  as  it  were,  eclipses  the  other,  revealing  by  ap- 
proach and  collision  its  greater  content  or  its  finer  beauty.  In 
English,  cordiality  and  hospitality  are  measurably  synony- 
mous ;  the  difference  is  the  real  or  practical  kindness  of  the 
latter.  Upon  the  vernier  of  thought,  hospitality  centres  upon 
cordiality  but  overlaps  it  by  practical  expression.  A  cordial 
man  may  not  be  sufficiently  generous  to  be  hospitable,  to  take 
his  friend  into  his  home  as  a  guest.  But  to  be  hospitable  without 
being  cordial  is  unthinkable.  Yet  he  who  has  not  learned  Latin 
can  only  with  great  difficulty  perceive  this  difference,  which 
lies  in  cars,  heart,  and  hospes,  home-guest.  Or  let  us  compare 
man  and  vir;  skill  and  ars ;  good  and  dya#o?.  From  each 
comparison,  our  ideas  acquire  sharper  and  fuller  definition. 
The  Greek  Christ  and  the  Aramaic  Jesus  are  synonymous 
words  that  tell  the  meaning  of  a  schism  in  Christendom  six- 
teen hundred  years  old,  —  an  apparently  irreconcilable  differ- 
ence. Can  Jesus  save  by  his  example  ?  Has  Christ  saved  by 
his  death  ?  Was  the  crucifixion  a  political  blunder  ?  Or  was 
it  a  divinely  appointed  Atonement  ? 

The  two  valid  reasons  for  the  study  of  a  second  lan- 
guage are  definition  of  words  and  definition  of  ideas. 
Were  not  English  itself  a  language  colligated  and  de- 
rived from  several  other  languages,  were  it  not  a  compo- 
sition of  foreign  and  ancient  languages,  these  two  reasons 
would  be  for  us  even  stronger  than  they  are.  The  advan- 


INTELLIGENCE  237 

tages  to  a  Japanese,  a  Chinese,  a  Hindoo,  of  the  study 
of  any  European  tongue  are  incalculably  great. 

The  third  great  language  question  is  grammar.  To  be 
literate,  one  must  know  the  logic  of  speech.  Of  course, 
grammar  turns  upon  the  sentence,  which  is  a  synthetic 
judgment  of  ideas,  a  thought.  The  sentence  may  be  a 
simple  thought ;  simple  thoughts  combined  in  series,  but 
too  closely  related  for  separation  and  isolation  ;  or  simple 
thoughts,  colligated  as  superior  or  inferior.  The  func- 
tion of  grammar  is  to  reveal  the  relations  of  the  simple 
thoughts  and  to  analyze  the  synthesis  of  ideas,  composing 
each  simple  or  pure  thought. 

A  sentence  is  a  speech. 

Sentence  is  a  Latin  derivative,  implying  perception  or 
feeling  via  the  senses,  that  is,  a  sentence  expresses  a  judgment 
upon  ideas  or  percepts  or  sensations  perceived.  A  sentence 
of  the  first  power  of  thought  is  an  apperception  expressed 
in  words. 

Speech  is  a  Teutonic  derivative  and  has  a  curious  shade  of 
meaning,  which  is  thunder  or  lightning.  To  speak  is  to  talk 
like  thunder-and-lightning,  to  roar,  to  fire  away.  Colloquial 
slang  preserves  this  in  a  singular  manner. 

Sentence  implies  impression  and  reflection,  —  that  all  know- 
ledge is  from  the  senses :  speech  announces  expression, 
emphasizing  the  individuality  of  man. 

After  each  completed  thought,  speech  pauses,  and 
there  is  a  period  of  rest  at  the  end  of  the  sentence. 

Therefore,  we  capitalize  the  first  word  of  each  sen- 
tence (or  complete  speech)  and  block  the  last  word  with 
a  dot  or  period.  In  this  way,  we  punctuate  or  point  out 
each  rounded  thought  or  completed  series  of  closely  re- 
lated thoughts.  All  the  internal  punctuation  of  the  sen- 
tence depends  upon  the  same  principle,  which  is,  that 
the  associations  of  thoughts  in  clauses  and  of  ideas  in 
phrases  are  marked  by  brief  pauses  and  may,  therefore, 
be  appropriately  indicated  or  pointed  off  by  subordinate 


238  THE    EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

marks.  Punctuation  does,  indeed,  exaggerate  the  pauses 
of  thought  ;  but  it  exaggerates  in  the  interest  not  of  the 
thinker,  but  of  the  follower  of  the  thought.  The  reader, 
not  the  writer,  compels  the  punctuating  of  ideas  (words), 
of  composed  ideas  (phrases),  of  simple  thoughts  (clauses), 
and  of  the  entire  sentence  or  speech. 

At  first  thought,  it  may  appear  that  the  thinker  who 
writes  is  more  heavily  handicapped  by  his  readers  than  the 
thinker  who  speaks  is  handicapped  by  his  auditors.  But  the 
contrary  is  true,  for  several  reasons.  The  auditor  must  go 
forward  part  passu  with  the  speaker,  whether  or  not  he  has 
the  will  and  the  power  to  follow.  If  he  loses  a  link,  the  chain 
of  the  logic  is  broken.  The  reader  can  proceed  at  his  own 
pace.  The  speaker  must  consider  his  own  strength  and  en- 
durance and  his  own  fatigue-limits  (or  time-limit)  and  also 
those  of  the  auditors.  Emphasis  by  the  voice  has  its  limits ; 
but  emphasis  by  order  of  words,  by  iteration,  by  exposition 
has  almost  no  limits.  Visual  learning  is  much  younger  in  the 
race  than  auditory ; l  but  visually  we  may  compass  a  page  at 
once,  while  aurally  we  may  hear  but  a  syllable  at  a  time  and 
retain  scarcely  ten  words  in  one  presentation  in  conscious- 
ness. But  for  the  magic  of  the  personal  presence  and  agree- 
able voice  of  a  few  orators,  written  language,  centuries  ago, 
would  have  displaced  spoken  language  save  in  brief  conver- 
sation. 

We  call  words,  because  of  their  uses,  "  parts  of  speech," 
meaning  parts  of  the  sentence,  indispensable  fractions  of  the 
integral  unit,  the  sentence  or  complete  judgment.  The  longer 
the  sentence  the  less  important  any  word,  that  is,  any  func- 
tional part.  In  itself,  no  word  is  a  noun  or  a  preposition  or 
an  adverb,  but  may  be  this  or  that  by  its  use  in  the  sentence, 
its  part  in  the  speech.  We  recognize  the  truth  of  this  when 
we  consider  words  that  are  capable  of  several  uses.  "  He  did 
well."  "Heiswell."  "The  well  was  dug."  "Well,  I  disagree." 
Of  course,  in  these  various  uses,  "  well  "  is  a  different  part  of 
speech ;  though  literally  the  same,  it  conveys  a  different  idea 
because  of  its  varying  use.  "  To  be  or  not  to  be,  that  is  the 
1  Hall,  Adolescence :  its  Psychology,  chapter  ix. 


INTELLIGENCE  239 

question."  "  Two  men  were  there."  "  It  is  a  long  journey  to 
fame."  "Too  great  familiarity  marks  the  insensitive  man." 
Orally  and  aurally,  these  "to's"  are  the  same.  For  con- 
venience, we  distinguish  them  somewhat  for  visual  differen- 
tiation. Yet  the  "  to  "  of  "  to  be  "  is  a  very  different  part  of 
speech  from  the  "  to  "  of  "  to  fame,"  quite  as  different  as  is 
the  "  too  "  of  "  too  great." 

Of  what  values  in  the  acquirement  of  literacy  are  the 
analysis  of  the  simple,  the  compound,  and  the  complex 
sentence ;  the  recognition  of  parts  of  speech ;  and  the- 
determination  of  the  rest  of  the  grammar  of  the  sen- 
tence ?  The  answers  appear  when  we  recall  once  more 
what  literacy  is, —  the  power  to  interpret  thought,  to 
dig  out  all  the  meaning  that  the  thinker  was  able  to  put 
into  his  sentences. 

As  the  gardener  collects  his  fruits  and  vegetables  and  packs 
them  into  boxes  and  crates,  so  the  thinker  collects  his  ideas 
and  feelings  and  packs  them  into  words  and  sentences. 
Grammar  unpacks  the  thoughts  and  sets  them  upon  the  table 
for  consumption.  Grammar  does  even  more  ;  it  selects  the 
good  ideas  and  the  real  thoughts  and  prepares  them  for  the 
mind.  Grammar  rejects  misshapen  and  deformed  thoughts. 
To  talk  or  to  write  "  bad  grammar  "  is  evidence  of  imperfect 
or  incorrect  thinking. 

The  last  language-question  of  importance  is  definition. 
The  literate  must  learn  phonics ;  the  vocabulary  of  his 
own  language,  if  possible,  with  or,  if  fate  so  wills,  with- 
out the  help  of  a  foreign  language  ;  grammar  ;  and  the 
exact  meaning,  the  definition,  of  a  number  of  words 
adequate  to  his  thought-capacity.  Each  is  a  higher  stage 
than  the  preceding  ;  each  a  more  difficult  process.  It 
is  comparatively  easy  to  learn  to  recognize  words  and 
to  associate  their  sounds  and  signs  with  ideas.  It  is  a 
little  harder  to  accumulate  a  considerable  number  of 
words  in  the  memory  for  rapid  recognition.  Few  persons 
know  more  than  five  thousand  different  words.  It  is 


240  THE    EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

considerably  harder  to  get  out  of  words  in  sentences 
not  only  the  ideas  in  the  words,  but  the  relations  of 
the  words  and  the  thoughts  in  each  sentence.  But  it 
is  hardest  of  all  to  define  accurately  the  words  and  the 
sentences ;  that  is,  to  see  clearly  all,  and  no  more  than, 
the  ideas  and  the  thought. 

Because  of  this  failure  to  define,  human  testimony  upon 
"hearsay"  is  absolutely  rejected  in  all  English  and  American 
courts  of  law.  It  is  not  that  the  memory  only  fails  ;  the 
understanding,  the  interpretation,  the  definition  also  fails.1 
Many  managers  of  great  business  enterprises,  many  school 
superintendents  with  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  with 
whom  to  deal,  always  reduce  to  writing  every  important  order, 
direction,  or  explanation.  Why  ?  Because,  as  discussed  in  the 
text,  visual  learning  far  exceeds  in  accuracy  and  thoroughness 
(if  not  in  immediate  distinctness)  auditory  learning.2 

Definition  is  the  essence  of  logic.  Without  it,  the 
most  accurate  syllogism  becomes  more  or  less  fallacious. 
We  may  represent  the  process  of  thought  as  follows  :  — 

Ideas  Words  Definitions        Collecting  ideas 

Relations  Words  and  0 

Associations  phrases 

Thoughts  Sentences  Syllogisms  Judgments 

Organizing  sciences  logically  =  PHILOSOPHY 

The  bearings  of  these  considerations  regarding  literacy 
upon  educational  theory  and  practice  may  be  expressed 
briefly  and  categorically  without  exposing  the  argument 
to  attack  as  dogmatic.  Since  literacy  is  the  power  to  pro- 
nounce words,  to  associate  with  them  the  proper  mean- 
ings, to  define  accurately  .their  contents,  and  to  interpret 
them  in  their  sentence-relations  (that  is,  as  thoughts  syn- 
thesizing and  relating  ideas),  the  process  of  becoming 
literate  is  obvious.  It  is  necessitated  by  the  nature  and 
conditions  of  literacy. 

1  Greenleaf,  On  Evidence  ;  Reynolds,  ditto. 

2  Vide  the  business  magazine,  System,  issues  of  1905  and  1906,  passim. 


INTELLIGENCE  241 

1.  Phonics  must  be  perfectly  acquired  and  frequently  re- 
viewed until  their  recognition  becomes  that  "acquired  habit" 
which  Wellington  pronounced  "  twice  nature."   This  means 
phonics  upon  every  occasion  when  new  words  are  introduced, 
in  short,  from  kindergarten  through  the  university  and  the 
professional  school. 

2.  A  great  abundance  of  reading  is  essential  because  the 
learner  must  see  each  important  word  in  many  lights  and 
from  many  angles.    But  this  reading  must  be  carefully  ex- 
plained, that  the  ideas  and  thoughts  be  clear  and  organized. 
Confusion  of  words  is  almost  as  bad  as  ignorance  of  them. 

3.  Since  the  price  of  literacy  is  much  reading  with  interest, 
it  is  essential  that  the  reading  be  interesting,  that  it  feed  the 
curiosity,  supply  the  needs  as  they  arise,  and  arouse  yet  new 
demands. 

4.  A  foreign  language  should  be  studied  early.    And  if  not 
a  foreign  language,  then  the  philology  of  the  English  language 
must  be  thoroughly  mastered,  beginning  in  early  grades.   The 
literate  can  distinguish  between  synonyms. 

5.  Grammar  is  a  necessity.    Its  true  beginning  is  sentence- 
recognition  and  its  next  stage  sentence-analysis.    Grammar 
grows  with  one's  own  growth.    It  is  a  mental  exercise,  a 
logic,  and  as  applied  to  English  and  to  foreign  languages  may 
well  occupy  a  dozen  years  of  schooling. 

6.  Definition  rises  to  the  dignity  of  a  regular  place  in  the 
programme.    "Words  are  things,"  as  Byron  said.    They  are 
reservoirs  of  power.    They  are  tools,  some  of   tremendous 
force,  others  of  marvelous  delicacy.    They  are  as  human  as 
the  flesh  and   bones  of  humanity.    In  every  subject,  diffi- 
cult old  words  and  all  new  words  should  be  defined  with 
unfailing  faithfulness,  with  faith,  indeed,  that  to  know  words 
is  to  enter  into  the  literary  inheritance,  the  thought,  of  the 
race. 

To  read  is  to  summon  before  the  mind  out  of  the  words 
pictures  as  real  as  life,  and  to  relate  these  pictures  as 
closely,  as  definitely,  as  logically  as  did  the  writer  him- 
self. It  is  to  think  his  thoughts  after  him  and,  it  may 
be,  to  see  more  in  his  thought  than  the  writer  himself 


242  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

ever  saw.  For  we  see  in  the  light  of  our  own  experi- 
ences, which  may  be  many  and  varied;  but  we  see  only 
as  clearly  as  our  mind-sight  has  been  trained  to  see.  It 
is,  therefore,  useless  to  begin  reading  before  we  can  ob- 
serve and  have  observed  truly  ;  and  useless  to  continue 
to  read  unless  we  continue  to  observe  and  to  experience, 
constantly  interpreting  what  we  read  by  what  we  know 
and  constantly  translating  what  we  know  from  experi- 
ence into  what  we  read  in  the  records.  Thus  literacy 
illuminates  the  fields  of  our  observation,  and  observation 
illuminates  the  fields  of  our  reading.  And  observation 
and  literacy  by  developing  the  intelligence  prepare  the 
soul  for  training  to  efficiency. 


CHAPTER   XII 

EFFICIENCY 

My  father  worketh  hitherto,  and  I  work.  —  JESUS,  John,  Gospel  v,  17. 

Better  ignorance  than  knowledge  that  does  not  develop  a  motor  side.  —  HALL,  Ado- 
lescence :  its  Psychology,  vol.  i,  p.  204. 

What  hand  and  brain  went  ever  paired  ? 
What  heart  alike  conceived  and  dared  ? 
What  act  proved  all  its  thought  had  been  ? 
What  will  but  felt  the  fleshly  screen  ? 

R.  BROWNING,  The  Last  Ride  Together. 

WHO  does  not  admire  the  efficient  man?  The  Oriental. 
He  rules  all  the  world  save  the  empire  of  that  efficient 
woman,  Tsi  An.  But  he  is  secretly  despised  from  Cairo 
east  to  Canton.  To  the  Occidental  mind,  efficiency  far 
exceeds  literacy:  to  the  Oriental,  efficiency  seems  ignoble, 
needless,  wanton.  Therefore,  the  Occident  surpasses  the 
Orient,  marking  a  higher  tide  in  human  life.  Therefore, 
the  awakening  Orient  throws  off  its  literary  lethargy  and 
once  more  seeks  to  do.  For  the  Orient  was  not  always 
asleep  in  philosophic  revery,  in  traditional  routinism, 
content  with  keeping  life  in  the  body.  It  gave  birth  to 
Genghis  Khan  and  to  Mohammed.  The  Orient  has  been 
fallow  ground  for  a  thousand  years.  Who  knows  what 
crops  may  not  yet  spring  from  that  fertile  soil  ?  l 

Mere  doing  is  not  efficiency.  The  doing  must  be  in- 
telligent, purposeful  doing  of  things  worth  while.  There- 
fore, in  a  high  civilization,  the  greatest  efficiency  is  the 
accomplishment  of  a  generous  intelligence,  yet  such 
intelligence  is  in  itself  not  enough  ;  it  is  merely  the 
condition  of  efficiency.  When  doing  passes  beyond 

1  Cf.  Little,  Intimate  China  ;  Smith,  Village  Characteristics  ;  Vambery, 
Western  Culture  in  Eastern  Lands. 


244  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

knowledge  (which  in  civilization  is  almost  synonymous 
with  literacy),  it  is  at  once  in  danger  of  being  incom- 
petent, valueless,  even  dangerous.  The  world  resounds 
with  waste  effort,  misdirected  exertion,  work  without 
wages,  capital  lost  in  "  bad  "  investments,  unhappy  re- 
actions from  "  bad  "  acts.  He  who  does  too  much  is  the 
advertiser  of  his  own  folly.  The  "  too  much  "  of  action 
is  evidence  of  too  little  knowledge. 

As  the  literate  man  is  tempted  to  be  that  and  no  more, 
and  as  his  peril  is  reflection  without  fruition  in  useful 
activity,  so  the  efficient  man  is  tempted  to  be  not  that 
but  a  mere  doer,  because  his  peril  is  action  without  re- 
flection upon  the  data  of  knowledge.  Those  women  of  the 
Western  world  who  have  achieved  literacy  are  scarcely 
yet  in  danger  of  too  great  and  of  too  many  opportunities 
of  action,  but  the  men  of  this  Western  world  who  have 
achieved  economic  and  political  freedom  are  in  very  great 
and  almost  constant  danger  of  activity  beyond  knowledge. 

Nothing  is  more  common  in  the  United  States,  North, 
South,  East,  and  West,  than  to  find  men  in  the  high  places 
of  government,  of  religion,  of  business,  of  education,  of  cul- 
ture, of  war,  —  heads  of  families  also,  —  who  have  no  com- 
prehension of  their  tasks,  powers,  opportunities,  obligations.1 
They  do  daily  many  things,  and  they  do  a  dangerous  propor- 
tion of  them  wrong.  The  capitalist  "  turns  down "  a  wise 
proposition  and  undertakes  a  foolish  one.  Sooner  or  later 
most  properties  are  wasted  utterly  or  pass  into  the  hands  of 
the  competent.  The  tool,  the  grafter,  the  ignoramus  sits  in 
what  should  be  the  seat  of  the  statesman,  the  wise  lawgiver. 
Government  becomes  a  department  of  business,  and  a  badly 
managed  department  at  that.  Universities  select  ministers 
instead  of  educators,  or  flatterers  of  possible  rich  patrons  in- 
stead of  scholars,  as  their  presidents  ;  and  cities  select  clerks 
instead  of  executive  teachers  as  superintendents.  Why?  Be- 
cause trustees  and  members  of  public  governing  boards  act 
without  intelligent  knowledge.  The  relative  incompetence  of 
1  Miinsterberg,  The  Americans,  p.  8. 


EFFICIENCY  245 

our  national  government  in  both  peace  and  war  is  too  familiar 
to  need  exposition  here.  Democracy  is  marvelously  efficient 
upon  the  periphery  of  the  individual  initiative  of  the  citizens, 
but  ominously  deficient  at  the  governmental  centres.  In 
America  we  do  enough  ;  but  we  do  not  do  well  enough.  We 
have  not  learned  that  it  is  immoral  to  undertake  what  one 
has  not  the  preparation  and  ability  to  perform. 

Our  specific  inquiry  here  is  how  to  achieve  efficiency. 
It  has  frequently  been  said  that  health  is  a  condition 
limiting  efficiency.  It  has  even  been  said  that  physical 
strength  is  such  a  condition.  The  truth  will  appear  upon 
definition  of  the  terms  and  upon  summary  of  the  facts. 
Health  is  haleness,  holiness,  wholeness.  It  implies  per- 
fection of  the  body  as  a  working  organism.  This  includes, 
of  course,  perfectness  of  the  body  as  tool  or  comrade 
or  producer  of  the  mind.  Human  health  is  scarcely  an 
end,  but  rather  a  means  to  complete  living.  Paradoxical 
though  it  may  seem,  health  is  rather  the  result  of  satis- 
faction with  life  than  the  cause  of  it.  The  mind  con- 
ditions the  body  rather  than  the  body  the  mind.1 

What  but  mind  fashions  the  embryo  in  the  womb  and 
gives  the  newborn  infant  structure,  tissue,  organs,  func- 
tioning ?  What  but  mind  gives  sight  to  the  eye,  hearing 
to  the  ear,  feeling  to  the  flesh,  taste,  desire,  pain,  joy  ? 
Moreover,  who  cares  to  live  when  he  cannot  enjoy  life, 
that  is,  when  his  mind  is  not  in  control  of  his  body? 
Not  he  who  knows  that  he  can  never  recover  control. 

In  the  years  1905  and  1906,  the  presidents  of  the  three 
largest  life  insurance  companies  of  America  were  discredited 
by  public  revelations  developed  in  an  investigation  by  a  com- 
mittee of  the  New  York  State  Legislature.  These  three  men, 
though  above  sixty,  were  in  robust  health.  Within  a  few 
months,  one  had  died  of  "  a  complication  of  diseases,"  another 
was  a  mental  wreck  in  a  sanatorium,  and  the  third  a  pitiful 
invalid  traveling  abroad  for  his  health. 

1  Per  contra,  Clouston,  The  Hygiene  of  Mind. 


246  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

Sickness  and  even  death  so  often  follow  financial  troubles, 
such  as  bankruptcy,  insolvency,  losses  in  speculation,  as  to  at- 
tract no  other  comment  than  "  What  else  could  you  expect?  " 
One  who  is  growing  in  fame  or  in  wealth  or  in  power  is  almost 
always  improving  in  health.  The  increasing  bodily  vigor  of 
men  in  the  Presidency,  the  Governorships,  the  Mayoralties,  is 
proverbial.  Prosperity  is  a  condition  and  almost  an  assurance 
of  health.1 

Poverty  breeds  disease  not  only  because  it  causes  over- 
work and  underfeeding  and  because  in  confined  quarters, 
foul  air,  noise,  the  body  lacks  sunlight,  general  exercise,  and 
sleep,  but  also  because  it  "  takes  the  heart  out  of  life."  Suc- 
cessful men  often  work  sixteen,  even  eighteen  hours  a  day, 
neglect  to  eat  regularly  and  properly,  live  in  their  offices  or 
on  the  railroad,  or  about  hotels,  breaking  nearly  every  "  law 
of  health,"  drinking  too  much  alcoholic  fluid  and  smoking 
too  much  tobacco ;  but  all  the  while  they  remain  vigorous 
and  well.2 

There  is  a  current  notion  that  to  be  healthy  one  must 
exercise  the  external  muscles,  working  off  waste  tissue, 
getting  fresh  air,  and  creating  an  appetite.  Over-exercise 
is  easy  and  common.  At  a  given  time,  the  body  has  so 
much  energy,  and  no  more.  To  maintain  itself,  the  body 
requires  a  certain  minimum,  varying  of  course  with  the 
external  temperature,  wind,  and  sun,  and  with  the  cloth- 
ing. Any  exercise  whatever  beyond  internal  processes, 
and  such  accessory  muscular  movements  as  encourage 
such  processes,  must  come  from  a  surplus  above  that 
minimum.  Death  is  the  result  of  persistence  in  over- 
exercise,  —  that  is,  of  persistent  fatigue. 

Physicians  sometimes  fail  to  understand  this  principle.  Ex- 
pert neurologists,  however,  attending  sane  or  insane  neuras- 

1  James  asserts  that  responsibility  and  power  are  "  dynamogenic  "  in 
their  physiological  effects.    Address,  American  Psychological  Association, 
1906. 

2  Curtis,  Nature  and  Health,  chapter  xii. 


EFFICIENCY  247 

thenics  prostrated  by  complete  exhaustion,  allow  their  patients 
to  lie,  it  may  be  for  weeks  at  a  time,  without  motion,  appar- 
ently without  breathing,  in  darkened  rooms,  as  quiet  as  the 
tomb,  waiting  to  see  whether  life,  flickering  upon  surplus  or 
reserve  vitality,  shall  yet  return  to  a  flame.1  Deaths  by  relapse 
in  convalescence  after  disease  has  run  its  course  are  very 
common,  and  occur  almost  always  for  want  of  understanding 
the  simple  principle  that  the  first  energy  developed  by  the 
human  body  is  required  for  its  own  internal  operations.  Only 
the  surplus  can  be  devoted  to  "work." 

The  relation  of  health  to  efficiency  is  that  a  sense  of 
efficiency  conduces  to  health,  and  that  health  in  turn 
supplies  the  surplus  energy  required  by  the  effective 
effort.  The  beginning  of  health  with  man  is  in  his 
mind,  not  in  his  body.2 

The  inefficient  man  is  unhealthy ;  because  he  is  in- 
efficient, he  is  unhealthy.  One  of  the  major  symptoms 
of  inefficiency  is  inability  to  control  the  body  ;  and  in 
civilization  it  is  absolutely  necessary  to  control  the  body. 
The  first  essential  in  acquiring  efficiency  is  mastery  of 
the  body  :  the  second  is  mastery  for  some  end.  As  one 
must  "break"  the  colt  before  one  drives  him  to  market, 
so  one  must  reduce  the  body  to  subjection  before  setting 
out  to  some  particular  accomplishment.  This  is  what 
the  inefficient  never  learn,  or  learn  so  imperfectly  that 
their  efforts,  if  made  at  all,  break  down  in  process.  The 
world  calls  all  the  inefficient  "  weak-willed  ;  "  but  often 
they  are  in  the  strictest  sense  strong-willed.  Their  will 
is  not  rationalized;  it  is  sporadic,  whimsical,  capricious, 
physical,  energetic,  self-centred  in  its  object  but  dissi- 
pated in  its  efforts,  and  therefore  ineffective  for  ends  and 
unfamiliar  with  means. 

1  Mitchell,  Nerve  Paralysis,  Neurasthenia,  Doctor  and  Patient,  and 
other  titles. 

2  The  case  of  Elizabeth  Barrett,  who  married  Robert  Browning,  is  in 
point. 


248  THE    EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

The  relation  of  mind  to  body  determines  this  matter  of 
physical  health.  In  animals,  it  is  only  upon  occasion  that 
the  body  is  controlled  by  the  mind  as  a  continuum,  an 
identity,  the  simulacrum  of  personality  ;  but  in  men,  such 
control  characterizes  all  the  superior  and,  indeed,  all  but 
the  distinctly  inferior.1  The  human  mind  begins  to  ac- 
quire control  in  early  infancy.  The  baby  uses  hands, 
feet,  eyesight,  hearing  as  tools  and  viaducts  beyond  the 
power  of  even  mature  and  trained  dogs,  horses,  and  ele- 
phants, the  most  intelligent  animals.  A  normal  child  of 
four  has  entire  control  of  the  periodicity  and  disposition 
of  bodily  refuse  ;  can  restrain  laughter  and,  to  an  extent, 
tears ;  can  curb  anger  and  fear  and  simulate  affection 
and  delight ;  habitually  walks  upright ;  articulates  speech ; 
has  regulated  its  appetite  to  three  or  four  meals  a  day 
at  fixed  times ;  can  listen  to  continuous  narrative ;  to  a 
degree,  can  summon  recollection  ;  and  has  acquired  and 
can  manifest  a  measure  of  social  deportment.  At  fifteen 
years  of  age,  the  boy  or  girl  is  well  "  schooled."  The 
body  has  become  the  victim  of  cultures  that  the  mind 
may  be  victor  in  civilization.  Biologically,  the  human 
condition  at  fifteen  years  of  age  is  anomalous.  The  phys- 
ical life  has  discontinued  not  a  few  of  the  customs  of 
the  biological  continuum  since  protoplasm  began.  The 
marvel  is  not  that  so  many  boys  and  girls  are  ill,  but  that 
so  many  are  well.  But  the  marvel  disappears  when  we 
consider  that  this  whole  discipline  of  the  body  by  the 
mind,  when  conducted  intelligently  amid  conditions  and 
by  means  scientifically  correct,  is  good  for  the  health.2 
The  marvel  becomes,  therefore,  a  reproach.  At  eighteen 

1  That  it  characterizes  the  inferior  even  more  than  the  superior  is  the 
opinion  of  not  a  few  psychologists.  Cf.  Gowen,  "  Pestilences  and  Other 
Epidemics,"  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  January,  1907. 

*  Regulated  and  regular  exercise  of  the  mind  is  as  good,  physiolo^ 
gically,  for  the  body  as  it  is  for  the  brain,  since  it  floods  the  controlling 
nerve  tissue  of  the  entire  body  with  blood  and  energy.  Clouston,  Hygiene 
of  Mind. 


EFFICIENCY  249 

years  of  age,  more  or  less,  two  classes  of  persons  begin 
to  regard  health  as  of  primary  importance,  those  who  have 
wrecked  their  bodies  by  the  establishment  of  mental  con- 
trol and  those  who  see  in  bodily  health  an  end  in  itself, 
the  highest  mode  of  happiness.  The  first  are  the  invalids, 
and  the  second  the  athletes. 

This  discussion  omits  from  consideration  those  who  have 
inherited  ill-health  from  birth  and  those  who,  at  the  age  of 
puberty,  are  inheriting  it  by  atavism  or  by  cross-heredity.  The 
former,  by  definition,  have  never  really  known  what  health  is, 
for  the  congenital  invalid  has  never  experienced  eu^opta,  well- 
bearing,  joy  in  life,  a  sense  of  carrying  life  out  gloriously. 
There  are  a  few  amazingly,  extraordinarily  "  well  "  (vigorous) 
persons  who  seem  almost  to  manifest  the  symptoms  of  a 
physical  insanity,  a  paresis.  "  They  carry  all  before  them." 
They  are  not  so  much  "magnetic"  as  overpowering.  If  tra- 
dition is  correct,  Charlemagne  was  such  a  person  ;  William 
the  Conqueror  ;  Alexander  the  Great.  Such  men  are  occa- 
sionally successful  in  business  far  beyond  their  intellectual 
and  moral  deserts ;  because  business  is  the  modern  form  of 
private  war.1  (Not  exactly,  however,  in  the  same  sense  as 
diplomacy  is  a  modern  form  of  public  war.)  Probably  more 
persons  are  born  capable  of  such  exceeding  health  than  are 
permitted  by  modern  civilization  to  attain  it.2  The  systematic 
school-going  of  the  commercial  middle-classes  prevents  this 
superb  physical  development,  which  appears  most  frequently 
among  the  well-reared  rich  and  the  industrious  farmers  and 
mechanics. 

Certain  significant  features  of  the  modern  life  of  chil- 
dren appear  to  me  notable  and  reprehensible,  for  the  suf- 
ficient reason  that  they  tend  to  prevent  or  delay  normal 

1  They  are  the  examples  cited  by  the  proponents  of  the  new  science 
and  art  of  energetics,  which  seem  to  some  nobler  than  ethics.    Cf.  Gulick, 
The  Efficient  Life  ;  Roosevelt,  The  Strenuous  Life. 

2  I  have  met  among  the  Negros  and  Mestizos  a  proportion  of  such  per- 
sons  far  beyond  that  among  the  Caucasians,  who  in  comparison  with 
them  seem  physically  victimized  by  centuries  of  civilization. 


250  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

efficiency.1  My  postulates  are  that  intelligence,  effi- 
ciency, and  morality  need  not  be  excessively  disparate ; 
that  they  may  be  developed  in  a  zigzag  of  process  or  in 
a  concatenation  of  stages ;  and  that  with  most  persons  a 
generous  intelligence  is  unattainable  in  the  absence  of 
some  efficiency. 

Merely  for  the  sake  of  system,  I  note  these  features 
in  the  familiar  order  of  their  relations  to  the  social  in- 
stitutions, —  Property,  Family,  Church,  State,  Culture, 
Education,  Occupation,  Business,  War.2  Despite  the  im- 
portance of  Property  in  this  American  civilization  (where, 
indeed,  it  is  less  important  than  in  England  or  in  France), 
persons  under  twenty-one  years  of  age  have  almost 
nothing  to  do  with  it.  They  are  practically  never  the 
executive  owners  of  wealth.  The  American  legal  theory 
is  that  the  person  under  twenty-one  is  an  infant,  not  able 
to  walk  amid  vital  matters,  not  able  to  talk  about  wealth 
and  property.  The  purpose  of  this  theory  is  to  prevent 
the  swindling  of  ignorant,  weak-willed  persons  by  scoun- 
drels. The  effect  of  it  is  to  keep  boys  and  girls  ignorant 
and  weak  of  will  in  relation  to  property.  As  curiosity  is 
the  motive  of  both  observation  and  literacy,  so  ambition 
is  the  motive  of  efficiency ;  and  ambition  soon  recognizes 
the  relation  of  property  to  personal  success.  The  pro- 
tection of  infants  from  swindlers  never  has  been  effec- 
tive :  the  frauds  of  trustees  are  as  notorious  as  are  the 
follies  of  heirs  just  come  of  age.  As  for  the  trust-estates, 

1  The  present  abnormal  conditions  seem  obstructive  to  the  progress  of 
mankind  and  characteristic  of  a  necessary  but  transitional  and  temporary 
economic  regime. 

2  The  formalism  of  this  system  would  seem  more  vital  to  Americans, 
were  all  of  us  to  visit  Central  and  Western  Europe.    In  March,  1906,  the 
German  Kaiser  denounced  the  opponents  of  the  "great  fundamental 
social  institutions,  the  monarchy,  property,  and  the  army."    For  us,  the 
monarchy  is  a  figment  of  the  imagination  and  the  army  a  minor  school. 
This  seemed  to  be  the  issue  between  MUnsterberg  and  his  critics  at  the 
Peace  Congress,  New  York,  April,  1907. 


EFFICIENCY  251 

those  half-feudal  creations  of  the  modern  economic  re*- 
gime,  their  sole  result  is  to  keep  the  heirs  of  wealth 
children  throughout  life,  the  pathetic  victims  of  paternal 
pride  and  solicitude. 

Poor  or  rich,  the  child  should  acquire  and  hold  pro- 
perty. It  is  the  price  of  self-respect,  the  condition  of  self- 
enlargement.  As  one  who  holds  a  cane  in  his  hand  has 
enlarged  his  physical  periphery  by  his  new  ability  to  feel 
at  a  distance  (the  hand  enlarges  the  life  beyond  the 
brain),  so  one  who  owns  books,  tools,  furniture,  a  cow, 
a  colt,  a  city  lot,  a  savings-bank  deposit,  a  share  in  a  rail- 
road company,  has  enlarged  his  mental  horizon  and  has 
a  sense  of  security,  of  "home  "  in  the  world.  Moreover, 
his  ambition  to  be  something  by  getting  something  leads 
him  to  do  something ;  and  this  doing  for  an  end  con- 
duces to  efficiency.  Ten  years  of  age  is  the  character- 
istic period  for  the  manifestation  of  the  sense  of  meum 
and  of  tuum.  Let  the  child  acquire  property  in  the  light 
of  his  accumulating  knowledge,  permanently  worth  while 
property  as  well  as  temporary  toys.  Many  things  the 
children  read  about  they  can  never  own  ;  but  some  of 
them  their  schools  should  own  and  use  for  them ;  and 
some  few  the  children  could  and  would  own,  were  our 
social  notions  more  sane. 

The  victim  of  a  trust  estate  gave  as  his  reason  for  marrying 
early :  "  Well,  I  knew  that  I  could  never  own  any  property 
myself.  My  father  saw  to  that.  But  at  least  I  own  a  wife  ; 
she  's  mine,  and  she  does  n't  belong  to  the  trustee."  This 
same  wife  has  taught,  perhaps  forced  is  not  too  strong  a 
term,  the  man  to  save  one  half  his  annual  income,  so  that  he 
has  acquired  unreasonably  late  in  life  a  notion  of  property. 

The  poor  suffer  too  much  from  family  communism.  A 
little  girl,  who  had  been  given  two  pennies,  justified  her  ex- 
penditure of  them  for  candy  by  saying:  "If  I  had  took 
them  home,  Pop  would  have  taken  them  from  me  to  buy 
tobacco  or  Maw  to  help  get  the  Baby  some  shoes. >; 


252  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

Much  worse  in  modern  life  is  our  inability  properly  to 
utilize  in  the  home  the  labor  of  our  children.  This  is  a 
great  pity,  and  our  schools  should  supplement  the  radical 
defect.  Getting  up,  dressing,  eating,  going  to  school, 
acquiring  literacy,  playing,  and  going  to  bed  do  not 
constitute  for  children  a  normal  or  a  rational  life.  They 
are  deprived  of  the  human  right  to  do  and  to  make  use- 
ful things.  In  the  modern  home,  of  poverty,  of  compe- 
tence, and  of  wealth,  there  is  nothing  worth  while  for  the 
child  to  do.  The  kindergarten  with  its  occupations  and 
its  busy  work  for  the  four-year-old  comes  into  the  life 
of  the  modern  child  as  a  great  relief ;  but  it  lasts  at  most 
only  a  year  or  two.  The  art  and  manual  training  of  the 
grades  when  immediately  connected  with  the  kinder- 
garten tasks  help  in  a  measure,  especially  when  objects 
of  value  are  made.  But  at  the  best  they  do  not  help 
much. 

Said  a  three-year-old  child  to  its  father,  "  I  Ve  nothing  to 
do."  She  harped  on  this  for  days,  cried  herself  to  sleep  with 
the  monotonous  refrain,  night  after  night.  She  had  sickened 
of  the  inept  nursery  toys,  the  aimless  paper-cutting,  the 
watching  of  her  sisters  after  school  at  their  employments  and 
the  watching  for  their  home-coming  from  school.  Finally,  her 
mother  invented  something  worth  while  for  her  to  do,  and 
kept  on  inventing  until  the  day  for  going  to  kindergarten  at 
last  arrived.  The  modern  mother  either  buys  her  bread  at 
the  baker's  or  hires  a  servant  to  make  it,  —  and  the  servant 
is  too  busy  to  allow  children  around.  A  house  with  two  or 
three  servants  is  a  tomb  for  children.  The  boys  and  even  the 
girls  of  well-to-do  parents  who  keep  horses  in  stables  upon 
their  own  property  are  usually  to  be  found  there  (for  stables 
are  favorite  haunts  for  children  because  there  is  always  some- 
thing to  do  where  there  are  animals) ;  but  city  parents,  for 
obvious  ethical  and  social  reasons,  must  order  coachman  or 
stableman  to  keep  their  children  out  of  the  stables  and  barns. 
Even  country  parents  of  means  try  to  shut  up  their  children 
into  lives  of  "  nothing  to  do." 


EFFICIENCY  253 

The  normal  animal  becomes  partly  self-supporting 
when  very  young.  The  human  young  are  deprived  of 
this  means  of  growth  and  of  enjoyment  and  of  acquiring 
insight  into  life. 

This  is  one  of  the  significant  features  that  gave  meaning 
to  the  experimental  elementary  school  of  the  Chicago  School 
of  Education  under  Dr.  John  Dewey.  But  it  is  not  enough  to 
have  industrial  education  at  school.  Industrial  activity  at 
home  is  yet  more  important.1 

The  rapid  disintegration  of  the  home  as  a  social  force 
is  due  primarily  to  its  loss  of  economic  activities,  and 
secondarily  to  its  resultant  inability  to  secure  and  to  re- 
tain the  affection  of  the  children.  In  the  days  when 
children  as  well  as  adults  worked  to  help  keep  the  family 
alive,  home  meant  something.  Indeed,  it  meant  almost 
everything.  To-day  it  means  almost  nothing.  Hence, 
among  the  poor  we  have  desertions  by  husbands  and 
fathers  of  the  wives,  mothers,  and  children,  and  among 
the  rich  divorces  and  adulteries,  unknown  or  condoned. 
And  we  have  also  un filial  children,  parents  neglected  in 
old  age,  brothers  and  sisters  alienated  and  estranged. 
There  may  be  no  way,  no  means,  in  an  age  of  machinery, 
whereby  ever  to  restore  to  the  home  an  integral  and  es- 
sential character.  But  if  there  be  such  a  way  or  means, 
it  must  be  by  restoring  economic  activities  to  the  home, 
—  to  the  father,  to  the  mother,  and  to  the  children.  In 
the  country  or  the  village,  the  home  may  have  both  out- 
door gardening  and  indoor  industrial  manufacture ;  in 
the  city,  it  can  have  only  the  latter.  Whether  the  factory- 
system  will  break  up  when  electric  power  can  be  con- 
veyed to  any  room,  no  one  yet  knows.  If  there  be  no 
way  to  restore  the  home,  and  if  the  race  is  to  maintain 
its  efficiency,  the  children  must  have  the  opportunities 
of  industrial  accomplishment  at  school.  And  the  school 
must  absorb  many  features  now  outside  its  customary 

1  Cf.  Dopp,  Industrial  Education. 


254  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

range  and  be  integrated  as  the  new,  vast,  portentous, 
independent,  unique  social  institution.1 

No  man  knows  how  much  the  School  may  yet  arrogate 
to  itself.  Three  hundred  years  ago  no  man  dreamed 
that  the  State  would  arrogate  to  itself  even  a  fraction  of 
its  present  powers  and  influences.  It  is  quite  conceiv- 
able that  the  School  will  watch  over  childbirth  and  child- 
rearing,  feed  the  children,  house  them  in  dormitories, 
teach  them  religion,  educate  them  as  now  and  far  better 
than  now,  advise  them  in  courtship,  and  instruct  them  in 
parentage  and  in  home-making.2  No  one  of  these  propo- 
sitions is  more  unreasonable,  of  not  one  is  the  accom- 
plishment more  incredible  than  are  the  present  efforts  to 
teach  the  duties  and  powers  of  political  citizenship  and 
to  train  to  skill  in  the  affairs  of  business.  In  its  schools, 
China  emphasizes  most  the  obligations  to  parents. 
Everything  depends  upon  the  point  of  view,  as  has  been 
said  ten  thousand  times  before. 

In  short,  either  the  home  must  be  restored  for  the 
sake  of  children  and  of  the  mothers  or  else  the  school 
must  be  developed.3 

In  human  history,  when  a  proposed  reform  is  the  restora- 
tion of  an  institution  that  society  has  outgrown,  we  may  be 
reasonably  certain  that  the  reform  would  be  *anachronistic, 

1  In  1905,  there  was  founded  in  Illinois  a  new  educational  paper,  The 
School  Century.  The  title  may  be  prophetic.  We  speak  of  the  fifteenth 
century  as  the  Italian  century,  of  the  sixteenth  as  the  Spanish,  of  the 
seventeenth  as  the  Dutch,  of  the  eighteenth  as  the  French,  of  the  nine- 
teenth as  the  English,  and  of  the  twentieth  as  the  American.  (Posterity 
may  speak  of  the  twenty-first  as  the  German  and  of  the  twenty-second 
as  the  Russian  or  Japanese ;  who  knows  ?)  Similarly  we  speak  of  the 
thirteenth  century  as  the  Church  century.  We  may  speak  of  the  nine- 
teenth as  the  State  century  and  of  the  twentieth  as  the  School  century. 

1  As  indication  of  the  tendency  in  this  direction,  see  Harris,  Address, 
Department  of  Superintendence,  Proceedings  National  Educational  Asso- 
ciation, Chicago,  1907. 

8  Stetson-Gilman,  Woman  and  Economics ;  Spargo,  The  Cry  of  the 
Children  ;  Tyler,  The  Physical  Basis  of  Education. 


EFFICIENCY  255 

reactionary,  and  destructive  of  progress.  But  is  the  Home 
really  outgrown,  outworn,  passe;  and  would  its  restoration 
be  devolution  ?  Why  not  make  homestead  land  once  more 
allodial,  free  of  all  tax,  inalienable  by  owners  or  heirs,  non- 
transferable  even  as  pledge  upon  mortgage  ?  Only  upon  such 
legal  foundation  can  homes  once  more  grow  in  the  land. 

As  many  men  and  women,  perhaps  most,  go  through 
life  as  proletarians,  propertyless,  so  the  multitudes  of  the 
essentially  homeless,  who  as  apartment  or  room  tenants 
tramp  from  street  to  street,  from  city  to  city,  from  State 
to  State,  is  annually  increasing.  Property  and  Home,  as 
social  institutions,  are  almost  as  meaningless  to  them  as 
Paradise  and  Heaven.  I  know  these  things  because  I 
have  experienced  them  through  bitter  years  and  decades 
as  child  and  man.  But  the  case  of  these  multitudes  is 
quite  as  bad  in  respect  to  the  Church. 

Religion  used  to  be  a  delicate  and  a  difficult  subject.  It 
has  lost  for  many  its  delicacy  because  of  its  remoteness ; 
and  it  has  lost  its  difficulty  because  of  its  strangeness. 
Many  persons  either  have  had  no  religious  experiences 
or  have  forgotten  them.  Such  cannot  understand  or 
appreciate  religion1 — just  as  he  who  has  had  no  pro- 
perty cannot  understand  or  appreciate  the  love  of  pro- 
perty and  the  care  for  it,  despising  the  rich  and  the 
thrifty,  but  for  whom  all  the  wealth  of  the  world  would 
soon  be  wasted  away  and  civilization  would  disappear  in 
barbarous  poverty.2 

The  disintegration  of  the  Church  has,  it  is  true,  been 
accompanied  by,  perhaps  has  caused,  a  certain  expansion 
of  religion.3  How  far  it  has  proceeded,  few  realize  until 
they  have  investigated  the  matter  historically.  The  Ro- 
man Catholic  Church  is,  indeed,  recovering  to-day  by 
indirection  a  measure  of  its  former  power  in  the  State, 

1  Illingworth,  Personality,  Human  and  Divine. 

2  Mayo-Smith,  Statistics  and  Economics. 

3  Donald,  The  Expansion  of  Religion. 


256  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

being  a  greater  influence  in  politics  than  those  outside  of 
politics  realize  :  but  even  this  international  Church  is 
losing  its  grip  upon  men  and  upon  children.  When  the 
Church  lost  its  monastic  and  conventual  estates  and  its 
political  and  ecclesiastical  powers  of  taxation,  it  lost  its 
economic  functions  and,  therefore,  declined  in  authority 
and  prestige.1  The  Catholic  Church,  however,  does  gen- 
erally hold  a  brief  for  its  right  to  educate  children.  Now 
the  children  are  the  lifeblood  of  any  religious  organiza- 
tion, denomination,  or  sect ;  and  the  Protestant  sects  at 
least  in  America  pay  but  little  attention  to,  and  care 
but  little  for,  children.  I  speak  in  the  relative  terms  of 
history.  The  evidences  of  this  are  the  scant  time  de- 
voted to  children,  —  an  hour  of  a  Sunday,  though  even 
this  is  omitted  by  city  churches  during  the  summer 
vacation,2  —  and  the  elaborate  process  of  "  admission  into 
the  church."  If,  as  I  believe,  the  Church  is  an  institution 
ordained  by  God  for  man,  then  the  Church  is  universal, 
and  every  child  is  born  into  the  Church  when  he  is  born 
into  the  world,  as  certainly  as  he  is  born  into  the  State, 
as  certainly  as  he  should  be  understood  to  be  born  into 
the  School,  as  certainly  as  he  has  the  right  to  be  born 
into  the  Home.  This  belief  is  for  me  the  solvent  of  all 
the  related  questions  of  right  and  wrong,  —  of  religion, 
of  government,  of  education,  of  parentage  and  homestead 
rights,  and,  therefore,  of  atheisms  and  anarchies,  of  igno- 
rance and  indolence,  of  adultery,  tenantry,  and  poverty. 

1  We  see,  for  example,  at  Vienna  and  at  Washington  wonderful  gov- 
ernment buildings  that  display  the  political  color  of  the  modern  world  ; 
and  we  forget  that  at  Rome  and  at  Constantinople  are  wonderful  religion 
buildings  that  display  not  less  conclusively  the  ecclesiastical  color  of  the 
mediaeval  world.  To-day,  the  State  transcends  the  Church  ;  to-morrow, 
Business  may  transcend  State  and  Church,  and  establish  at  London  and 
at  New  York  wonderful  commerce  buildings  to  bear  testimony  to  this 
transcendence.  Cf.  Patten,  Theory  of  Social  Forces. 

3  The  pastor  of  a  metropolitan  church  sent  out,  October  I,  1906,  a  cir- 
cular that  began  :  "  Dear  Friends,  —  It  is  the  season  when  we  resume  the 
work  of  the  Lord." 


EFFICIENCY  257 

If  the  child  is  born  into  the  Church,  then  from  birth 
he  has  duties  to  the  Church  as  well  as  rights  from  it. 
These  duties  are  worship,  service,  contribution,  loyalty, 
society  ;  and  these  rights  are  instruction,  tasks,  benefits.1 
There  are  but  few  signs,  however,  that  the  so-called 
"  leaders  "  of  the  churches  have  any  efficiency  in  the  pre- 
sence of  the  fact  that  the  multitudes  no  longer  go  to  the 
Protestant  churches  and  but  a  small  proportion  of  them 
to  the  Catholic  church.  Most  Americans  are  as  church- 
less  as  they  are  essentially  homeless  and  propertyless. 
Most  American  children  go  too  infrequently  to  church 
and  Sunday-school  to  derive  therefrom  any  instruction 
in  ethical  efficiency.  The  whole  scheme  of  church  mem- 
bership and  admission  thereto  is  in  Protestant  churches 
so  antagonistic  to  the  teaching  of  John,  "Whosoever 
will,  let  him  take  the  water  of  life  freely,"  2  that  but  for 
the  "exclusive  club"  features,  most  city  and  many 
country  churches  would  long  since  have  perished.  In 
religion,  something  to  do  is  essential  to  adult  and  to 
child.  Protestantism  supplies  very  little  to  do.  Its  ineffi- 
ciency is  notorious.  And  the  children  perish.  If  I  have 
said  almost  nothing  of  the  Sunday-school,  it  is  because 
there  is  very  little  of  good  or  very  little  of  anything  to 
say.  The  faith  for  want  of  works  is  moribund. 

To  many  who  know  and  love  the  Church,  each  new  revival 
strikes  upon  the  heart  a  fear  like  that  which  suffocates  the 
fond  watcher  at  the  bedside  of  the  dying.  We  build  not  cathe- 
drals, but  banks ;  and  we  fashion  not  creeds,  but  platforms. 
We  are  overthrowing  the  diseases  of  the  body,  while  the  soul 
shrivels,  hardens,  and  dies. 

The  Church  itself  is  dying  for  want  of  children  whose 
hearts  are  devoted.  In  its  weakness,  it  has  no  power  to 
draw  children  to  itself.  The  vicious  circle  of  a  maelstrom 

1  Blanchard,  The  Twentieth  Century  Church  in  Early  Christian  Con- 
ditions. % 

2  Revelation  xxii,  17. 


258  THE   EVIDENCES    OF  EDUCATION 

of  final  destruction  seems  established  ;  and  the  spell  can 
be  broken  only  from  without.  The  worshiping  church- 
goers are  an  ever-decreasing  minority.  And  religion  pure 
and  unadorned,  divine  worship  and  humanitarian  ser- 
vice, grow  less  and  less  in  Sunday-school  and  mid-week 
prayer  meeting.  To  the  noble  band  who  guard  the 
sanctuary,  all  honor  and  all  gratitude.  The  truth  en- 
dures ;  and  they  are  safe  within  its  protection.  But  the 
custodian  of  the  truth,  the  institution  that  manifests  it, 
deprived  of  economic  functions,  is  slowly  wearing  away 
from  the  tides  and  storms  of  the  world. 

In  the  present  conditions  of  the  Church,  the  child  has 
no  hope  of  acquiring  efficiency  by  directed  doing  in  its 
service.  What  then  of  the  State  ? 

The  American  democratic  State  is  peculiarly  a  man's 
institution.  In  the  Nation  and  in  forty-one  out  of  the 
forty-five  States,  women  can  hold  no  important  offices 
and  can  exercise  almost  no  political  functions  save  the 
paying  (or  the  giving-up)  of  taxes.  They  may  here  and 
there  vote  at  school  elections  ;  but  taken  generally,  they 
are  nonentities  in  government.  It  is  possible  for  a 
woman  to  be  monarch  of  the  British  Empire,  but  not 
president  of  the  American  Republic.  The  influence  of 
women  in  American  political  life  is  far  less  than  in  Eng- 
lish or  French  political  life.1  The  situation  is  this  :  save 
for  a  few  equal  suffragists,  American  women  care  little 
or  nothing  about  government  or  politics.  Even  taxpay- 
ing  women  leave  the  affairs  of  government  to  men.  The 
result  is  that  the  mothers  have  but  little  influence  upon 
the  political  education  of  their  sons,  and  none  upon  that 
of  their  daughters.  This  produces  a  singular  condition 
in  the  instruction  in  our  high  schools,  with  their  hundred 
girls  for  every  forty  boys  and  their  five  women  teachers 
for  every  man  teacher.  Usually  the  history  and  the  Eng- 
lish, the,  Latin  and  the  German  are  taught  by  women  and 

1  Barrett,  Women  and  Democracy. 


EFFICIENCY  259 

studied  by  the  girls  for  mental  discipline  or  emotional 
experience,  while  the  mathematics  and  the  sciences  (if 
any)  fall  to  the  other  sex.  American  public  secondary 
education  has  taken  on  a  strangely  introspective  charac- 
ter. Almost  the  last  notion  of  the  school  is  that  know- 
ledge should  eventuate  in  and  direct  action. 

The  children  of  a  democracy  have  no  conscious  rela- 
tion to  government.  Is  the  case  different  in  aristocracy 
and  monarchy  ?  Most  assuredly  yes  in  the  cases  of  some 
children  ;  for  in  the  aristocratic  monarchy,  the  princes 
are  reared  from  infancy  to  be  rulers  in  the  State,  and 
the  nobles,  lords,  knights,  officials,  are  trained  from  in- 
fancy to  be  the  executive  agents  of  the  political  rulers. 
Nor  has  the  education  of  the  princes  and  of  the  lords 
been  without  avail:  this,  rather  than  hereditary  excel- 
lence,1 accounts  for  the  unbroken  line  of  the  descendants 
of  Cedric  upon  the  throne  of  England  and  for  the  long 
centuries  of  Hapsburg  sovereigns  upon  the  Continent  of 
Europe.  Considered  as  government  purely,  and  no?  as 
ethics,  the  best  government  in  the  world  to-day  is  that 
of  the  Kaiser,  as  every  competent  observer  knows ;  and 
the  strength  and  the  wisdom  of  that  government  may 
be  discovered  rather  in  the  Hohenzollern  dynasty  than 
in  the  Reichstag. 

In  America,  there  is  some  slight  insight  into  the  prin- 
ciple involved  in  the  European  training  of  princes  for 
rule  and  of  lords  for  high  service.  We  talk  about  the  pre- 
paration of  every  future  self-governing  voter-sovereign, 
the  democratic  servant-ruler,  for  citizenship.  But  what 
we  talk,  the  European  nobles  do.  The  education  of 
princes  does  not  end  until  it  is  completed,  or  until  the 
tutors  agree  that  further  efforts  at  education  will  avail 
nothing.  We  are  content  to  let  the  education  of  our 
boys  end  whenever  our  boys  choose  or  the  economic 
pressure  determines.  But,  it  will  be  replied,  Europe 

1  Per  contra,  Woods,  Heredity  in  Royalty,  passim. 


260  THE    EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

completely  educates  only  a  few  ;  we  try  to  educate  all. 
To  this,  the  answer  is  that  Europe  intends  to  educate 
every  heir  to  thrones,  to  dukedoms,  to  baronies,  in  short 
every  probable  ruler,  and  bars  all  others  out  from  the 
opportunities  of  political  power.  By  its  system  of  aris- 
tocracy, monarchical  Europe  saves  from  destruction  by 
the  masses  those  ideals  and  traditions  of  culture  which 
the  uncultured  hold  of  little  value  or  despise.1 

Whatever  may  be  the  qualifications  of  the  foregoing 
principle,  whatever  may  be  its  relation  to  the  indubitable 
fact  that  all  power  is  essentially  economic  and  material, 
and  that  such  economic  power  has  survived  the  transit 
of  civilization  2  to  America,  the  conclusions  are  the  same, 
and  they  are  inevitable.  Every  boy  should  be  educated 
for  citizenship,  and  his  education  should  be  continued 
until  its  completion,  because  citizen-sovereignty  is  cer- 
tain for  him.3 

What,  then,  as  to  the  American  girl  ?  If  there  is  any- 
thitig  that  is  certain  in  human  history,  it  is  that  the  mater- 
nal heritage  is  as  important  to  the  child  as  the  paternal. 
Every  princely  line  in  Europe  has  educated  its  women. 
As  long  as  the  American  girl  has  no  future  in  govern- 
ment, so  long  will  the  American  mother  be  less  well 
fitted  than  she  should  be  to  bear  and  to  rear  boys  who 
shall  be  worthy  of  our  democratic  citizenship.  At  pre- 
sent American  democracy  with  its  enfranchised  men 

1  Munsterberg,  The  Americans,  chapter  xxiii ;  cf.  Carlyle,  Heroes  and 
Hero-worship. 

2  Eggleston,  The  Transit  of  Civilization,  passim. 

3  Except  in  the  District  of  Columbia.    The  effect  of  confining  citizens 
to  the  function  of  criticism  can  be  understood  only  by  residence  in  this 
unfortunate  satrapy  of  Congress  and  the  President.    Every  American  has 
a  right  to  the  educational  opportunities  of  the  ballot.   In  this  District, 
the  lessons  of  a  thousand  years  of  social  development  have  been  brusquely 
thrust  aside;  and  political  serfdom  has  been  boldly  and  probably  irrevo- 
cably revived.    The  dry  rot  of  empire  sets  in  at  the  capital  as  the  dry  rot 
sets  in  at  the  hearts  of  forest  timber.    Perhaps,  republican  empire  can 
endure  no  longer  than  can  any  other  kind  of  empire. 


EFFICIENCY  261 

and  unfranchised  women  is  like  a  biped  trying  to  walk 
with  one  leg  sound  and  the  other  shriveled. 

The  systematic  private  war  of  the  feudal  period  and  the 
systematic  public  war  of  the  national  period  have  been 
responsible  for  the  genealogies  via  the  male  line  and 
for  the  patronymic  nomenclature.  In  yet  older  times,  the 
children  bore  either  the  maternal  name  or  no  ancestral 
name  at  all.  But,  in  war  times,  the  fathers  become  social 
dictators  by  virtue  of  their  superior  fighting  powers.  In 
monogamic  marriage,  both  parents  could  be  identified, 
and  both  parental  and  filial  pride  dictated  the  dual  name 
system, — one  name  personal,  the  other  paternal.  Re- 
cently the  triple  scheme  —  one  name  personal,  the  next 
maternal,  and  third  paternal  —  has  found  some  vogue. 
Biology  knows  no  defense  for  paternal  genealogies  rather 
than  ancestral  pedigrees. 

The  proposition  that  girls  should  have  no  preparation 
for  government  because  as  women  they  are  not  to  par- 
ticipate in  it,  save  as  the  political  subjects  of  their 
fathers,  husbands,  and  sons,  exactly  squares  with  the 
proposition  that  women  should  not  participate  in  govern- 
ment because  they  have  no  preparation  for  it.  And 
both  propositions  reek  with  the  false  notions  of  our 
eccentric  culture,  —  that  the  child  is  not  equally  the  heir 
of  the  father  and  of  the  mother,  of  their  bodies,  and  of 
their  souls ;  that  it  is  good  for  the  woman  and  for  the 
race  that  she  should  be  but  half  educated ;  and  that  the 
minds  of  men  are,  in  some  mysterious  way,  of  masculine 
descent  and  those  of  women  of  feminine  descent,  while 
these  two  ways  are  growing  ever  more  and  more  diver- 
gent. 

To  some,  the  issue  here  raised  may  seem  academic. 
It  has,  however,  the  most  practical  bearing  upon  the 
question  of  human  efficiency,  and  has  the  most  intense 
meaning  for  human  morals.  In  relation  to  all  matters  of 
the  State,  —  government,  politics,  legislation,  judicature, 


262  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

enforcement,  international  affairs,  private  property, — 
the  girl  who  studies  history,  government,  political  science, 
or  reads  the  daily  papers,  current  magazines,  novels  of 
political  life  knows  that  however  intelligent  she  may  be- 
come, she  can  never  be  directly  an  actor  in  such  affairs. 
Government  is  for  her  a  blind  alley.  The  curiosity  that 
leads  to  intelligence  must  not  awaken  in  her  an  ambition 
to  be  efficient,  lest  her  will  be  broken.  I  shall  recite  no 
general  argument  for  woman  suffrage  or  for  equal  suf- 
frage. I  present  only  this,  to  my  notion,  unanswerable 
proposition  :  No  education  can  be  complete  that  excludes 
the  idea  of  efficiency  in  any  important  social  institution. 
It  is  unanswerable  because  it  is  a  matter  of  definition,  of 
postulate,  of  original  premise.  Of  course,  if  the  purpose 
of  the  Creator  in  maintaining  the  world  is  fulfilled 
though  an  entire  sex  be  inefficient  in  respect  to  the  poli- 
tical order,  then  I  fail  to  conceive  the  Creator  properly, 
and  the  nature  of  human  society,  this  book  is  useless, 
and  my  argument  is  wasteful  of  time.  A  notion,  how- 
ever, persists  that  most  of  the  competent,  clear-headed, 
and  large-hearted  men  of  this  civilization  are  in  favor  of 
the  complete  education  of  all,  to  the  measure  of  their 
capacities.1 

Because  of  this  proposition  that  male  and  female  chil- 
dren alike  should  be  prepared  for  efficiency  in  govern- 
ment, the  question  arises  as  to  which  of  two  kinds  of 
methods  in  education  is  the  more  likely  to  prepare  them 
properly.  It  is  argued  by  some  and  practiced  by  most  that 
discipline  in  youth  is  the  source  of  independence  and  of 
intelligent,  efficient,  and  moral  authority  and  obedience 
in  manhood  as  democratic  voter-ruler.  It  is  argued  by 

1  If,  because  woman  is  consecrated  to  the  home,  therefore  she  needs  no 
knowledge  of  government,  then,  because  man  is  devoted  to  business, 
why  is  he  not  relieved  of  the  burden  of  government  ?  Masculine  demo- 
cracy objects,  "No,"  violently;  but  the  Old  World  quietly  puts  queens 
on  thrones  and  relegates  ordinary  men  to  economic  work  and  nothing 


EFFICIENCY  263 

most  and  practiced  by  few  that  self-government  in  youth 
leads  to  self-government  in  manhood  and  in  womanhood. 
Neither  teacher-rule  nor  pupil-government  has  the  breadth 
of  vision  to  see  the  real  conditions  to  be  met.  In  adult 
life,  the  man  is  to  progress  through  many  stages  and  is  to 
sustain  many  relations,  some  superior,  most  subordinate, 
and  perhaps  none  of  them  continuous  and  permanent. 
The  objects  of  teacher-rule  are  two  :  obedience,  that  is, 
docile  acceptance  of  authority,  and  knowledge  of  princi- 
ples, that  is,  acquaintance  with  adult  standards  of  action. 
The  teacher  instructs  and  reigns,  the  pupil  hearkens  and 
does.  Unless  on  the  merits  of  the  various  possible  causes 
of  action  the  pupil  chooses  to  obey,  there  is  for  him  no 
will-training  in  this  system  of  teacher-tyranny,  however 
enlightened  the  teacher  may  be.  Neither  fear  nor  affec- 
tion trains  the  will.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  pupils  in 
the  school  governed  absolutely  by  the  teacher  get  most 
of  this  will-training  through  the  voluntary  choices  ex- 
ercised in  their  free  relations  with  one  another  at  recess 
time  and  out  of  school. 

Those  who  argue  in  favor  of  pupil-government  occupy 
different  but  scarcely  larger  ground.  It  is  true  that  "  like 
produces  like ;  "  and  that,  therefore,  the  child  who  sees. 
in  his  teacher  a  "boss"  will  look  for  a  "boss"  to  rule 
him  in  government,  in  religion,  and  in  business  through- 
out life.  But  we  are  apt  to  forget  the  other  equally  true 
result  of  the  principle :  the  child  who  has  governed 
himself  and  others  in  the  light  of  a  child's  knowledge 
will  be  very  apt  to  regard  that  knowledge  as  sufficient 
for  the  self-government  of  men.  In  real  life,  childish 
ignorance  and  independence,  in  government  are  quite  as 
common  and  as  dangerous  as  slavish  dependence.  Just 
as  teacher-rule  fits  girls  to  obey  sullenly  in  monoga- 
mous marriage  and  to  accept  frivolously  a  male  demo- 
cratic government,  so  pupil-government  brings  boys  to 
an  arrogant  assumption  of  duties  of  which  they  have 


264  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

no  adequate  conception.  Sometimes,  the  boy-victim  of 
teacher-tyranny  at  school  becomes  by  reaction  the 
would-be  man-tyrant  in  business  or  "boss"  in  politics. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  pupil-governed  school  is  a 
forcing-house  of  youthful  politicians. 

If  the  School  should  be  continued  upon  its  present 
lines  with  boys  and  girls  in  compulsory  attendance  until 
twenty-one  years  of  age,1  its  graduates  would  be  turned 
loose  into  the  world  in  a  very  different  condition  from 
that  which  they  now  manifest  after  schooling  until  four- 
teen or  fifteen  years  old,  and  then  training  (more  or  less) 
in  domestic  or  factory  or  office  life  for  the  girls,  and  in 
factory  or  store  or  mine  life  for  the  boys,  for  seven  years 
thereafter.  These  intervening  years  before  coming  of 
age  and  after  school  life  is  over  are  of  signal  importance 
in  the  actual  preparation  of  young  men  for  active  and 
of  young  women  for  passive  citizenship.  But  the  School 
should  not  be  continued  upon  its  present  lines.  It 
must  effect  a  practical  reconciliation  between  teacher- 
despotism  and  pupil-democracy. 

The  relations  of  education  to  efficiency  in  the  cultural 
arts  are  few  and  simple.  Mere  intelligence  in  music  or 
in  painting,  in  architecture  or  in  agriculture,  in  engineer- 
ing or  in  carpentry,  in  bricklaying  or  in  mining,  in  book- 
keeping or  in  merchandising,  in  managing  employees 
or  in  obeying  employers,  is  but  the  vision  of  the  pro- 
mised land.  It  is  useless  to  others  for  one  to  have  a 
scientific  knowledge  of  music  or  of  literature  or  of  steel- 
making  or  of  house-building,  but  no  power  to  express 
this  knowledge  in  appropriate  action.  Such  knowledge 
makes  critics  and  mere  critics.2 

1  Henderson,  Education  and  the  Larger  Life,  p.  368. 

2  A  professional  critic  may  be  a  person  who  has  tried  an  art  and  failed 
in  it,  or  one  who  has  never  had  the  courage  to  try,  or  one  who  has  been 
denied  the  opportunity  to  try,  or  one  who  has  succeeded  so  well  that  he 
dares  not  or  cares  not  to  try  again ;  a  critic  is  never  a  first-rate  artist, 


EFFICIENCY  265 

The  arts  may  be  considered  as  fine  or  industrial.  The 
latter  form  a  signally  important  division  of  the  occupa- 
tions of  mankind.  Two  of  the  fine  arts,  music  and  paint- 
ing, should  be  of  major  consideration  in  all  education 
because  of  their  exceeding  value  in  the  liberation  and 
disciplining  of  the  soul.  Moreover,  their  relation  to  effi- 
ciency is  so  immediate  and  their  appeal  to  the  soul  is 
made  so  early  in  life  that  they  are  available  for  training 
to  do  from  the  first  days  at  school.  But  it  costs  money 
to  secure  teachers  and  apparatus  for  teaching  any  art. 
Consequently,  the  actual  courses  in  school  in  music  and 
in  painting  are  mere  skeletons.  Music  requires  not  only 
teachers  who  are  both  educators  and  musicians,  but  also 
musical  instruments.  Children  should  hear  good  music 
and  learn  to  play  good  music  upon  piano,  harp,  violin, 
flute,  or  organ,  and  to  sing  both  in  chorus  and  solo.  Simi- 
larly, painting  requires  not  only  teachers  who  are  both 
educators  and  painters,  but  also  the  materials  and  the 
tools  of  the  painting  art.  Recent  educational  progress  in 
this  fine  art  has  not  yet  reached  oil  color,  but  it  offers 
more  promise  than  that  in  any  other  fine  art.  The  gen- 
eral public  can  see  the  results  and  retain  them  more  or 
less  permanently  and  conspicuously. 

What  as  to  efficiency  in  education  itself  ?  Has  this 
been  either  a  social  or  a  professional  ideal  ?  Is  it  not 
true  that  in  the  teeth  of  the  fact  that  business  men  and 
social  workers  are  calling  for  actors  and  doers,  we  are 
sending  into  the  world  boys  and  girls  who  are  mere 
knowers  and  critics  ?  Why  do  we  not  ourselves  demand 

engaged  at  the  time  in  his  proper  business  as  an  art  producer.  The  critic 
has  a  possible  function,  that  of  the  watch-dog  for  the  public.  Some 
critics  who  perform  this  function  wisely  deserve  the  gratitude  of  human- 
ity. ("The  critic  must  accept  what  is  best  in  a  poet  and  thus  become 
his  best  encourager."  Stedman,  Poets  of  America,  chapter  vi.)  There  are 
many  varieties  of  the  critic ;  and  every  field  of  human  activity  is  the 
witness  of  his  exploits.  But  the  critic  and  the  creator  will  ever  be  at  war, 
—  often,  be  it  confessed,  in  the  same  man. 


266  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

more  years  for  education  and  meanwhile  set  about  mak- 
ing school  work  really  educative  ? 

It  is  perfectly  true  that  in  efficiency  Americans  have 
attained  extraordinary  excellence ;  but  this  is  true  only 
of  the  men  and  not  of  the  women.  American  women 
are  characteristically  less  efficient  than  the  German,  the 
French,  or  the  Swiss.1  Even  the  woman  teacher  who, 
in  America,  has  secured  a  monopoly  of  elementary  class 
teaching  is  successful  rather  in  intelligence  and  in  the 
sex-instinct  to  love  children  than  in  efficiency.  The  ex- 
planation of  the  efficiency  of  American  men  lies  else- 
where than  in  their  schooling.7 

The  boys  of  America  get  into  their  life-work,  their  in- 
dustrial or  commercial  art,  early ;  and  with  a  peculiar 
national  tradition.  It  is  a  wonderful  country  for  men  ; 
or  rather  it  was  until  the  very  last  years  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  "Room  at  the  top"  and  "Go  West, 
young  man,  and  grow  up  with  the  country  "  were  famous 
sayings  of  Daniel  Webster  and  of  Horace  Greeley. 
"America,"  said  Emerson,  "is  another  name  for  oppor- 
tunity." Here  the  European  peoples  were  debouching 
their  vanguards  in  our  valleys  and  upon  our  prairies  and 
plains.  Here  were  struggles,  at  first  of  Spanish,  Dutch, 
English,  and  French  ;  later,  of  Americans,  English,  Irish, 
Germans  ;  and  recently  of  Americans,  Poles,  Russian 
Jews,  and  Italians.3  These  struggles  were  intellectual, 
economic,  social,  political,  ethical,  and  religious.  They 
resulted  in  the  breaking  up  of  the  national  groups ;  and 
denationalization,  in  turn,  produced  individualization. 
The  often  excessive  individualization  that  results  is  one 
of  the  largest  factors  in  what  the  world  calls  American- 

1  I  speak  of  the  whole,  not  of  any  class,  and  of  course  not  of  individ- 
uals. 

2  Hughes,  The  Making  of  Citizens  ;  Miinsterberg,  TTie  Americans. 

8  Here  also  is  going  on  that  tremendous  and  perilous  social  develop- 
ment of  the  Caucasian  and  the  Negro  in  juxtaposition. 


EFFICIENCY  267 

ism.  The  individual,  disregarding  family  traditions  and 
social  customs,  seeks  his  own  ends.  His  powers  are  lib- 
erated. His  new  and  relatively  free  outlook  upon  the 
world  suggests  forthstepping  into  it  toward  some  goal  of 
personal  desire.  He  strikes  out  for  himself. 

The  resources  planted  by  Nature  in  our  country  are 
very  great.  The  exceeding  individual  activity  of  our 
people,  reinforced  by  group-activities  and  ancestral,  fac- 
tional, and  personal  rivalries,  and  still  further  stimulated 
by  climates  of  great  heat  extremes  and  in  great  variety, 
producing  peoples  of  varying  and  in  certain  respects  an- 
tagonistic temperaments,  has  resulted  in  scientific  dis- 
coveries and  in  technical  inventions  surpassing  those  of 
any  other  nation  in  history.  Not  Nature,  but  man  here, 
in  the  presence  of  these  extraordinary  opportunities,  has 
made  the  United  States  the  richest  nation  of  all  the 
world  and  of  all  the  ages.  This  economic  efficiency  has 
not  been  the  result  of  the  common  schools,  but  rather 
in  spite  of  them.  It  has,  indeed,  erected  special  schools 
for  its  own  maintenance  and  extension.  The  rise  of 
scientific  and  technical  schools  in  Germany  has  been  the 
result  of  political  ambitions  and  of  a  deliberate  govern- 
mental policy  :  here  it  has  been  the  result  of  economic 
ambitions,  spontaneous,  free.  "  Self-made "  men,  who 
often  have  had  almost  no  schooling  in  the  cultural  sense, 
have  founded,  endowed,  and  popularized  our  schools  for 
economic  efficiency.  Their  purposes  have  included  a  de- 
sire to  secure  more  and  better  and  cheaper  servants  to 
carry  out  their  far-flung  plans  of  industrial  warfare. 

A  fairly  complete  list  of  the  occupations  and  trades 
now  practiced  in  our  country,  some  by  multitudes,  others 
by  groups,  would  fill  several  pages.  It  would  begin  with 
the  professions,  proceed  with  the  learned  and  the  expert 
occupations,  carry  forward  the  arts,  follow  on  with  the 
routine  industrial  habitudes,  involve  every  manner  of 
business,  and  end  in  the  simplest  manual  labor.  Law, 


268  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

medicine,  ministry,  education,  engineering :  consider  their 
hundred  forms  and  processes.  Journalism,  teaching,  nurs- 
ing, authorship,  editing :  these  are  but  suggestions. 
Music,  instrumental  and  vocal ;  the  drama,  the  opera, 
vaudeville,  the  circus,  painting,  sculpture,  landscape 
gardening,  architecture :  every  term  has  many  possible 
applications.  Shoemaking,  silk,  woolen,  and  cotton  tex- 
tile manufacture,  mining  of  iron,  coal,  copper,  lead,  gold, 
silver,  metal-working,  lumbering,  cattle-raising,  cotton- 
and  rice-planting,  farming,  gardening,  fruit-growing,  brew- 
ing, distilling  :  every  word  speaks  of  thousands,  yes,  tens 
of  thousands  of  workers.  Banking,  merchandising,  organ- 
izing, superintending,  and  employing  labor,  transporting 
goods  by  ship  and  by  train,  real  estate,  stock-broking, 
pawnbroking,  hotel-keeping,  saloon-keeping,  policing, 
cooking,  sewing,  telegraphing,  typewriting,  telephoning, 
detecting,  guarding  criminals  :  these  are  terms  almost 
vague  because  of  the  varieties  and  numbers  of  persons 
involved.  Ditch-digging,  road-working,  hod-carrying, 
teaming,  sweeping,  moving  household  goods,  carrying 
letters,  bearing  messages,  selling  newspapers :  thus  an- 
other part  of  the  list  begins.  Moreover,  there  is  here 
scarcely  a  suggestion  of  the  thousands  of  lawmakers, 
executives,  judges,  in  government.  And  we  must  try  to 
put  out  of  our  minds  the  underworld  of  vice,  —  the  vari- 
ous "hells"  whose  workers  and  victims  are  constantly 
recruited  from  the  boys  and  from  the  girls  of  a  nation 
whose  God  seems  to  forsake  them.  Lastly,  there  is  a 
kind  of  efficiency  not  to  be  ignored  in  our  various  para- 
sites and  paupers,  the  worlds  of  excessive  luxury  and  of 
excessive  poverty,  —  efficiency  in  holding  on  to  life. 

In  early  adolescence,  the  first  symptoms  of  our  amaz- 
ing American  efficiency  appear.  The  boy  pines  to  go  to 
work.  Many  girls  are  similarly  afflicted.  They  desire 
"goods,"  property  of  their  own  to  spend  or  to  consume 
or  to  keep.  Sometimes,  their  motive  is  the  same  as  that 


EFFICIENCY  269 

of  the  boys,  to  make  places  for  themselves  in  the  world, 
but  very  often  it  is  maternal,  to  help  the  younger  chil- 
dren, or  patriarchal,  to  help  keep  the  family  together  by 
supporting  in  whole  or  in  part  the  parents.  Millions  of 
the  girls  of  America  go  from  school  to  factory  or  busi- 
ness just  as  millions  of  the  girls  of  Europe  share  in  the 
labors  of  farm,  dairy,  and  shop. 

The  turning  of  nearly  all  the  boys  and  of  a  constantly 
increasing  proportion  of  the  girls  at  thirteen,  fourteen, 
or  fifteen  years  of  age  into  the  world  of  work  for  wages 
is  so  essentially  historical,  so  distinctly  hereditary,  so 
thoroughly  human  that  it  appears  appropriate.  More- 
over, it  so  certainly  results  in  a  narrow  technical  effi- 
ciency in  work  as  to  appear  commendable.  When  the 
boy  fails  at  school,  the  parent  (and  often  the  teacher 
also)  cries,  "  Put  him  to  work,"  on  the  theory  that  the 
factory  or  store  is  really  a  better  school  for  the  careless, 
inattentive,  disorderly,  perhaps  truant  boy,  than  the 
school  of  education. 

It  is  a  strange  situation,  worthy  of  an  entire  book  by 
itself,  this  going  to  work,  with  mind  unformed,  in  a  civili- 
zation incredibly  more  complex  than  any  hitherto  known 
in  the  world.  The  economic  effect  upon  the  wages  of 
adult  men  and  women;  the  moral  effect  upon  family  life  ; 
the  physical  effects,  personal  and  racial ;  the  aesthetic  and 
cultural  effects  :  one  does  not  like  to  contemplate  these. 
Two  aspects  only,  both  of  them  educational,  we  may  not 
neglect.  The  school  wants  the  ability  to  prepare  for 
economic  efficiency.  But  for  this  grave  defect,  millions 
of  boys  and  girls  would  continue  at  school  several  years 
longer  than  they  do  now.  Moreover,  the  school  itself 
suffers  by  the  absence  from  the  higher  grades  of  these 
stronger-willed  workers.  For  the  truth  of  the  matter  is 
that  while  the  boys  and  the  girls  of  superior  intelligence 
deliberately  choose  to  remain  at  school,  those  of  superior 
energy  quit  the  leisurely  life  of  study  for  the  harder  work 


270  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

of  the  wage- world.1  Poor  as  the  schools  are,  this  early 
maturity  of  will  is  usually  a  misfortune.  By  the  time 
that  he  reaches  twenty-five  or  thirty  years  of  age,  the 
man  usually  wakes  up  to  the  value  of  an  education  when 
he  sees  that  those  who  remained  at  school  longer  than 
he  are  passing  him  in  the  race  of  life.  By  the  time  that 
he  is  fifty,  he  knows  certainly  that  "  education  pays." 
There  are,  of  course,  apparent  exceptions  to  this  rule, 
but  none  of  them  is  real.  A  genuine  education  neces- 
sarily increases  the  efficiency  as  well  as  the  intelligence 
of  the  individual. 

What  has  been  said  of  occupation  is  quite  as  true  of 
business  narrowly  defined  as  "  the  commercial  pursuits." 
The  trader  in  products,  like  the  producer,  —  the  book- 
keeper, the  salesman,  the  banker,  the  merchant,  like  the 
bricklayer,  the  iron-worker,  the  builder,  and  the  employ- 
ing manufacturer,  —  the  man  whose  primary  economic 
motive  is  competition,  like  the  man  whose  primary  motive 
is  cooperation,  —  must  find  his  preparation  at  the  foot  of 
the  ladder  after  school  days  are  over. 

Lastly,  war.  So  rich  is  America,  so  efficient  are  our 
people  in  the  industries  of  peace,  so  essentially  peace- 
able are  we  all,  that  we  refuse  to  obey  the  maxims,  "  In 
time  of  peace  prepare  for  war  "  and  "  The  best  way  to 
avoid  war  is  to  be  ready  for  it."  We  have  no  systems  of 
military  drill  in  our  public  schools,  not  even  in  our  high 
schools.2  And  yet  we  have  fought  many  wars,  two  of 
them  essentially  domestic  and  civil,  the  so-called  "  Revo- 
lution" and  "  Rebellion,"  both  of  them  originating  as 
insurrections  against  established  government.  In  all  of 

1  Webb,  Industrial  Democracy,  part  ii,  chapters  x  and  xi. 

2  There  are  a  few  cadet  companies  ;  but  there  is  no  universal  drilling 
of  boys  for  military  service.    Yet  every  great  nation  is  great  partly  be- 
cause of  its  volunteer  soldiers.    Where  all  the  aristocrats  are  ready  to  do 
battle,  there  the  nation  need  not  fear  its  enemies.   A  mercenary  army,  like 
a  corrupt  Capital,  like  an  hereditary  class  in  power,  displays  to  the  dis- 
cerning the  dry  rot  of  empire.    Cf.  Ruskin,  "  War,"  Crown  of  Wild  Olive. 


EFFICIENCY  271 

our  wars,  the  regular  army  has  been  only  the  nucleus 
around  which  have  gathered  such  militia  as  our  Colonies 
and  States  could  furnish  and  the  volunteers.  Militia  and 
volunteers  alike  have  been  young  men.  Toward  the 
close  of  the  War  of  Secession,  more  than  half  of  the 
soldiers  of  the  United  States  were  under  twenty-one 
years  of  age.  And  yet  we  have  always  chosen  to  instruct 
our  boys  as  though  they  were  all  certain  to  live  the 
peaceful  lives  of  women.  The  tale  of  history  is  the  tale 
of  wars ;  and  war  has  often  been  nearest  when  it  has 
seemed  farthest  away.1  Most  wars,  domestic  as  well  as 
international,  come  suddenly,  like  "the  thief  in  the 
night." 

As*  a  matter  of  history,  it  may  be  gravely  questioned 
whether  he  who  is  brought  up  in  entire  ignorance  of 
drill,  of  arms,  and  of  obedience  and  command  is  really 
educated  for  the  common  life  of  humanity.  In  1860, 
most  men  said  that  the  slave-labor  question  would  be 
answered  by  the  peaceful  evolution  of  social  life.  In  1906, 
they  are  saying  the  same  thing  of  the  wage-labor  ques- 
tion. Who  really  knows  what  time  may  yet  bring  forth  ? 

This  cursory  view  of  the  surface  of  American  society 
for  the  sake  of  seeing  whether  or  not  our  average  boy  or 
girl  is  educated  for  efficiency  in  its  life  may  include  only 
a  brief  survey  of  certain  miscellaneous  social  relations. 
But  one  other  people,  the  Chinese,  have  as  many  secret 
societies  as  have  the  Americans.  Both  China  and  Amer- 
ica have  governments  that  interfere  but  little  in  so-called 
personal  and  private  affairs.  The  result  is  that  freedom 
of  assembly  has  developed  numberless  instances  of 
secrecy  of  assembly.  The  meetings  of  lodges,  councils, 
fraternities,  sororities,  clubs,  unions,  guilds,  with  and 
without  political,  religious,  educational,  and  economic 
features,  vastly  exceed  in  number  the  formal  meetings 

1  William  Pitt,  "  Roll  up  that  map :  it  will  not  be  wanted  these  ten 
years."  After  Austerlitz.  Stanhope,  Life  of  Pitt,  chapter  xlii. 


272  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

of  governing  bodies,  political  parties,  churches,  colleges, 
schools.  Millions  of  American  men  and  tens  of  thousands 
of  American  women  belong  not  to  one  only  but  to  many 
public  and  secret  societies.1  "  Consciousness  of  kind  "  is 
a  fundamental  principle,  perhaps  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciple of  sociology.2  Despite  this  fact,  the  educators  of 
young  American  democrats  at  school,  often,  it  may  be 
usually,  try  to  prevent  the  formation  of  secret  societies 
and  sometimes  of  public  societies.  The  superintendent 
of  schools  in  a  great  city  has  pronounced  secret  societies 
undemocratic.3  The  boys'  "gang"  characterizes  every 
neighborhood  in  America,  urban,  suburban,  village,  and 
rural ;  and  it  will  always  characterize  American  society 
so  long  as  our  government  is  neither  a  tyranny  nor  an 
aristocracy.4  The  proposition  that  "getting  together  "  is 
dangerous  is  an  inheritance  from  the  days  when  it  really 
was  dangerous  —  to  kings,  to  nobles,  and  to  lords. 

If  men  and  women  are  to  conduct  lodges  and  clubs 
wisely  and  efficiently,  the  timely  place  in  which  to  learn 
the  sciences  and  the  arts  not  only  of  parliamentary  law 
but  also  of  social  control 5  is  the  school.  Neither  parents 
nor  teachers  have  the  right  to  deny  to  children  "  the 
peaceable  assembly  "  secured  to  themselves  by  public 
opinion  and  by  the  Constitution.6 

The  theatre  and  the  opera  constitute  a  social  institu- 
tion as  necessary  as  the  court  and  the  jail  to  civilized 
mankind  (that  is,  creatures  living  in  crowds  and  yet 
imaginative  and  aspiring,  and,  of  course,  fatigued).  The 
school  almost  always  and  almost  totally  ignores  the 
drama,  —  its  appeal  to  the  larger  nature,  its  effort  to 

1  The  "  joiner  "  is  a  well-recognized  species  of  the  American  social 
man. 

2  Giddings,  Principles  of  Sociology,  p.  17. 

3  Superintendent  E.  G.  Cooley,  Chicago,  special  report,  1905. 

4  Puffer,  "  Boys'  Gangs,"  Pedagogical  Seminary,  June,  1905. 
*  Ross,  Social  Control,  chapter  xiv. 

6  Amendments,  Article  I. 


EFFICIENCY  273 

i 

realize  the  good  and  evil  of  the  human  heart,  its  frivolity 
and  its  passionateness.  The  boy  or  girl,  released  or 
escaped  from  the  school,  suddenly  finds  in  the  theatre 
instruction  in  the  comedy  and  in  the  tragedy  of  human 
life  by  impersonation  with  a  skill  so  incredible  to  the 
childish  mind  that  the  acting  is  more  real  than  living. 
Strange  as  it  may  seem,  there  is  a  panacea  for  this  delu- 
sion of  the  school  and  factory  children  and  street  gamins, 
become,  one  and  all,  "  gallery  gods  "  in  the  city  theatre, 
—  and  this  panacea  is  the  play  at  school.1 

There  is  a  recreation  more  valuable  to  the  inhabit- 
ant of  the  city  than  the  drama,  and  this  is  the  summer 
vacation  in  the  open  country,  in  the  woods,  or  by  the  sea. 
To  be  able  to  return  to  Nature  is  not  a  gift,  but  an  edu- 
cation. In  every  year  for  the  civic  folk  a  month  in  the 
forest-camp  or  in  the  tent-on-the-beach  !  To  know  how 
to  enjoy  it !  To  know  how  to  play  in  the  world  as  God 
makes  it !  Why  should  not  the  school  prepare  us  for  this 
return  to  Paradise  ? 

1  I  have  been  told  many  times  by  boys  and  girls  sixteen  to  eighteen 
years  of  age,  who  left  school  at  the  close  of  the  compulsory  term,  that 
their  main  object  in  so  doing  was  "  to  get  money  to  go  to  the  theatre." 
In  this  exaggeration,  there  was  no  little  truth.  The  movement  for  school 
dramatics  for  all  ages  of  children  is  psychologically  correct. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

MORALITY 

Plus  on  sais,  plus  on  peut.  —  EDMOND  ABOUT,  A  3  C  du  Travailleur,  p.  39. 

Duty  is  not  the  child  of  a  birth  to-day  or  yesterday,  but  hath  been,  no  man  knoweth  how 
long  since.  —  SOPHOCLES,  Antigone. 

Our  lives  make  a  moral  tradition  for  individual  selves,  as  the  life  of  mankind  at  large 
makes  a  moral  tradition  for  the  race.  —  GEORGE  ELIOT,  Romola,  chapter  xxxix. 

Every  man  contains  in  himself  the  elements  of  all  the  rest  of  humanity.  Some  time  or 
other  to  each  must  come  the  consciousness  of  this  larger  life.  In  accepting  as  his  own 
the  life  of  others,  he  becomes  aware  of  a  life  in  himself  that  has  no  limit  and  no  end.  — 
CARPENTER,  Civilization,  its  Cause  and  Cure,  pp.  126,  128. 

No  perfect  man  has  ever  walked  this  earth.  Even  the 
blessed  Master  was  only  sinless,  not  complete  ;  as  a  per- 
son only  innocent,  not  infinite.  He  never  undertook  the 
relations  of  husband  and  father,  of  captain  of  armies,  or 
of  artist,  of  engineer,  or  of  employer,  ruler,  or  lord  of 
any  kind  in  church,  state,  land,  goods.  As  for  the  rest, 
whether  hero-saints  or  men  of  genius,  whatsoever  their 
qualities,  they  all  fail  in  perfect  righteousness  at  the  bar 
of  the  courts  of  even  this  world. 

Caesar  was  a  grievous  failure.  He  flooded  the  Western 
world  with  the  light  of  his  genius,  in  Spain  and  in  France 
gave  Europe  its  foundations,  mapped  out  the  Roman 
Empire,  wrote  laws  and  histories ;  but  of  his  personal 
life  he  made  nothing  else  or  less  than  a  botch.  His  very 
death  was  due  to  personal  mannerisms  and  methods. 
Napoleon  with  perhaps  equal  genius  flooded  Europe  with 
democracy,  tearing  away  old  traditions,  and  irrigating 
many  a  desert  in  the  human  spirit,  but  failed  even  more 
ignominiously 1  than  Caesar,  —  for  his  failure  was  not 
only  in  the  private  relations  of  life,  but  also  in  the 

1  Byron,  Childe  Harold,  Canto  iii.  A  truthful  contemporaneous  picture. 


MORALITY  275 

public.  And  Cromwell,  perhaps  the  greatest  of  all  Eng- 
lishmen of  action,  was  a  dismal  failure  in  the  fundamental 
morality  of  human  sympathy.  Neither  Washington  nor 
Lincoln,  neither  Franklin  nor  Emerson,  was  altogether 
sound-to-the-core,  —  outwardly  gracious,  inwardly  sub- 
stantial, in  public  ready  for  all  enterprises,  in  private 
wholly  good.  The  roll  of  great  and  good  women  may  be 
called  :  some  were  never  wives  and  mothers,  others  knew 
nothing  save  religion,  others  despised  art  and  society,  and 
all  failed  in  more  ways  than  one,  as  all  the  finite  must 
fail.  We  have  but  to  compare  great  men  with  one  another 
to  see  how  partial  in  his  excellence  each  one  is  and  how 
serious  in  his  deficiency.  Consider  that  greatest  of  all 
American  names  in  theology,  Jonathan  Edwards,  and 
link  with  his  name  that  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  It  is  like 
a  comparison  of  Dante  with  Shakespeare.1  Or  consider 
those  two  men  of  "  universal  genius,"  Michael  Angelo 
and  Goethe.  How  narrow  and  how  shallow  the  universal 
genius  seems  to  be  !  The  devoted  physician  wrecks  his 
health  to  tend  the  diseases  of  humanity,  and  dies,  leaving 
a  broken-hearted  wife  and  orphan  children,  often  poor, 
and  sometimes  penniless.  A  captain  of  industry  revolu- 
tionizes the  industry,  enriches  himself  and  perhaps  many 
others,  cheapening  his  products  for  the  markets  of  half 
a  world,  and  dies  with  never  a  good  deed  to  his  credit  in 
religion  or  in  government,  in  culture  or  in  charity.  Or  a 
poet  crystallizes  in  new  forms  the  spirit  of  a  great  and 
different  people,  for  he  is  a  seer.  But  he  has  never  lifted 
his  hand  to  labor  or  sung  one  verse  for  righteousness. 
The  pantheons  of  nations  are  indeed  many;  but  there  is 
none  perfect  therein, —  no,  not  one  ! 

So  difficult  is  morality  that,  though  quick  to  express 
judgments  of  individuals,  most  men  and  women  refuse 
to  discuss  or  even  to  consider  its  general  themes.  The 
moral  judgment  is  more  frequently  exercised  by  us  than 

1  Chancellor-Hewes,  The  United  States :  A  History,  vol.  ii,  p.  471. 


276  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

any  other.  "Good"  and  "bad,"  and  their  equivalents, 
are  the  commonest  words  in  the  languages  of  men.  "I 
don't  like  John  or  Mary,"  says  one,  to  be  asked  in  reply, 
"  Why  not  ? "  and  to  answer,  "  Because  he  is  mean  or 
stingy  or  hateful  or  deceitful,"  or  something  else  that 
is  immoral.  Morality  becomes,  therefore,  a  topic  to  be 
avoided  in  education,  but  invariably  relied  upon  as  an 
assured  by-product.  Is  it  possible  to  avoid  this?  Is  it 
desirable  to  try  to  do  so  ? 

In  no  age  have  the  consciences  of  the  best  men  en- 
dorsed the  morals  of  most.  And  yet  human  morality  has 
improved.  Is  it  possible  to  accelerate  the  rate  of  im- 
provement by  deliberate  planning  and  working  ?  If  not, 
then  all  our  criminal  laws  and  sanctions,  and  all  our 
religious  activities  of  the  past  have  availed  nothing ;  and 
the  progress  actually  achieved  has  been  no  greater  than 
it  would  have  been  without  them.  Nay  more  :  these  may 
have  actually  retarded  the  moral  advance  by  natural 
(that  is,  unreflecting)  evolution.  The  common  sense 
of  mankind  objects  to  such  a  conclusion.  On  the  con- 
trary, mankind  is  looking  for  social  machinery  adequate 
to  undertake  and  to  accomplish  the  task  of  universal 
betterment.1 

In  this  task,  three  stages  are  presented.  First,  a  suffi- 
cient number  of  sufficiently  intelligent  persons  must  be 
found  to  undertake  wisely  the  direction  of  the  enterprises 
of  the  various  social  institutions  and  of  all  the  miscella- 
neous, heterogeneous,  disassociated  activities  of  mankind 
that  we  now  group  arbitrarily  in  the  "  sphere  of  liberty." 
Next,  these  consistent  enterprises  and  these  vigorous 
activities  must  be  sufficiently  correlated  upon  principles 
and  by  laws  that  they  will  work  together  for  the  good  of 
mankind  with  common  consent.  To  discover  these  prin- 
ciples and  to  frame  these  laws  is  the  first  business  of  the 
wise  men  :  their  second  is  to  persuade  the  rest  to  accept 

1  Ward,  Psychic  Factors  in  Civilization,  chapter  xxxiv. 


MORALITY  277 

them.  And,  third,  there  must  stir  and  there  must  be 
stirred  in  the  social  mind  and  in  the  body  politic  suffi- 
cient motives  to  set  and  to  keep  the  entire  machine  at 
work.  Obviously,  each  stage  is  higher  and  harder  than 
the  preceding. 

The  first  requisite  is  clear  intelligence.  Ours  is  a  civili- 
zation so  vast  that  few  may  compass  it,  so  intricate  and 
so  tortuous  that  few  may  follow  its  ways,  so  dark  that 
few  may  see  its  facts.  But  the  second  test  of  individual 
and  social  preparation  for  the  task  is  still  more  severe. 
Intelligence  must  add  to  itself  effectiveness,  the  will 
to  do,  working-and-transforming  power.  The  panorama 
displays  millions  of  persons,  whom  the  wke  observer  un- 
derstands. Is  he  more  than  an  observer  ?  What  has  he 
the  strength  and  the  desire  to  do  for  them  ?  There  are 
workers  enough  among  them,  strong-willed  men,  who 
must  often  be  shouldered  aside  or  knocked  down  that 
truth  and  right  may  be  cleared  from  their  trampling 
feet.  The  man  who  would  do  work  worth  doing  for  his 
kind  must  have  power  to  do  it  against  every  kind  of  op- 
position, including  often  that  of  those  whom  he  would 
befriend.1  And  yet  another  qualification  is  set  for  the 
task.  Intelligence  and  power  of  will  must  add  to  them- 
selves morality  ;  and  what  is  this  ?  No  simple  thing,  but 
indeed  the  most  complicated  of  all  things,  a  composite 
of  many  lives,  a  reflex  of  ages  shining  in  the  soul,  the 
spirit  that  knows  and  loves  whatever  promotes  life  and 
knows  and  hates  whatever  injures  life.  For  this  is  the 
test.  For  this  Jesus  came.2 

No  age  or  land  has  ever  known  perfectly  moral  indi- 
viduals ;  and  as  certainly  no  age  or  people  has  ever  dis- 

1  "  The  fully  developed  man  knows  in  every  situation  in  life  just  exactly 
what  he  can  do  and  therefore  must  do  and  does  it."   Caldwell,  Schopen- 
hauer's System  in  its  Philosophical  Significance,  p.  2OI. 

2  Saleeby,  Atlantic  Monthly,  April,  1906,  "  The  Testimony  of  Biology 
to  Religion,"  and  Nietzsche,  Genealogy  of  Morals,  The  Will  to  Live,  third 
essay. 


278  THE  EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

played  a  perfectly  moral  society.  Noble  Athens  had  so 
many  immoralities  that  it  seems  almost  immoral :  and 
yet  if  Athens  was  essentially  immoral,  then  morality  is 
a  contradiction  in  terms.  Athens  loved  life  and,  for  many 
of  its  own  citizens  and  for  untold  thousands  since  her 
great  day,  made  life  beautiful.  In  so  far  as  Athens  loved 
life,  dignifying  and  ennobling  it,  she  was  moral.  He  dig- 
nifies life  who  makes  it  seem  desirable,  essentially  worth 
while ;  and  he  ennobles  it  who  makes  of  life  an  art.  He 
whose  life  makes  others  aspire  for  equal  life  lives  mor- 
ally. And  what  is  life  ?  To  see,  to  will,  to  feel  ever  more 
abundantly,  for  life  is  growth.  Thus  Athens  magnified 
life,  evolving  great  persons,  —  Plato,  Sophocles,  Phidias, 
Pericles,  Aspasia. 

Mother  England,  whose  children  have  gone  forth  to 
America,  Africa,  India,  Australia,  New  Zealand,  has  dis- 
played so  many  immoralities  as  to  seem  almost  immoral. 
Yet  England  has  loved  life,  multiplying  her  children  and 
sending  them  forth  lusty  and  strong  to  possess  the  earth. 
She  has  evolved  not  only  great  persons,  magnifying  life, 
but  very  many  such  persons,  multiplying  lives. 

From  certain  points  of  view,  France  and  Italy,  resting 
in  the  balance  between  the  tides,  seem  immoral ;  and  yet 
France  made  perfect  for  this  modern  age  the  industrial 
arts,  and  Italy  made  perfect  the  fine  arts.  Together, 
they  have  given  to  us  much —  it  may  be,  most  — of  the 
glory  and  excellence  of  our  culture.  The  immoral  can- 
not achieve  such  frankness  and  beauty. 

Nevertheless,  in  history  the  liberalizing  of  life  and  the 
increasing  of  the  numbers  of  the  living  have  often  pro- 
ceeded when  the  heart  of  society  was  unsound.  A  great 
tree  grows  with  rot  at  its  centre  until  storm  overthrows 
it  or  it  breaks  of  its  own  weight.  So  with  societies  of 
men.  The  rot  of  society  we  call  immorality  because  it 
eats  out  the  heart  of  life,  which  is  morality. 

God,  the  giver  of  life,  is  good.    He  who  thinks  not  so 


.MORALITY  279 

is  a  hater  or  a  despiser  of  life.  The  moral  man  thinks 
highly  of  life,  prizes  it,  desires  to  avoid  death,  which  is 
the  apparent,  the  earthly  bound  of  life,  and  desires  to 
avoid  disease  and  accident,  which  limit  life.  He  cares  for 
his  health,  which  increases  life.  Moreover,  he  loves  the 
living,  his  fellow  men,  and  in  particular  he  loves  children, 
whose  lives  are  to  endure  after  his  own  is  terminated 
here ;  and  he  loves  women,  the  bearers  of  life.  More- 
over, his  love  of  life,  of  children,  of  women  is  such  that 
he  lives,  works,  wars,  and  dies  for  them ;  boldly,  always, 
and  as  matter  of  course. 

Therefore,  the  moral  man  loves  God  and  fears  Him, 
—  loves  because  God  gives  and  enlarges  life,  and  fears 
because  He  visits  sin  with  disease  and  death. 

The  precepts  of  morality  grow  more  numerous  and 
difficult  as  men  grow  in  knowledge,  character,  and  virtue, 
and  as  they  increase  in  numbers  and  in  variety  of  social 
relations. 

There  is  a  morality  of  the  body.  "  Wash  you,  make 
you  clean."  1  Dirt  invites  the  microbes  of  disease,  the 
dealers  in  pain  and  in  death.  Every  great  religion  has 
emphasized  the  physiologic  truth  that  cleanliness  pro- 
motes immunity  from  disease.  And  why  not  ?  Did  not 
man  come  up  out  of  the  clean  sea  scarcely  an  aeon  ago  ? 
The  body  has  the  right  to  be  clean,  to  be  cleaned  as 
soon  as  dirt  or  soil  forms  or  falls  upon  it.2 

Yet  we  build  schoolhouses  in  which  dirty  children  must 
get  dirtier  and  stay  in  their  dirt,  involving  all  in  the  general 
misfortune.  And  the  city  poor,  through  the  day  deprived  of 
the  cleansing  of  the  free  air  of  the  fields  and  sky,  at  night 
languish  at  home  without  baths. 

1  Isaiah  i,  16.  It  is  the  saying  of  the  greatest  of  the  Hebrew  prophets. 
Many  modern  men  have  forgotten  the  foundations  as  given  in  the  Mosaic 
Code. 

2  Curtis,  Nature  and  Health,  and  Stinson,  The  Right  Life,  discuss  these 
themes  of  a  prescriptive  morality. 


280  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

Eating  is  a  moral  duty.  Jesus  established  eating  and 
drinking  as  the  basis  and  form  and  structure  of  a  re- 
ligious sacrament.1  The  metabolism  of  food  is  miracu- 
lous. No  scientist  has  yet  disclosed  this  mystery.  Eating 
good  food,  properly  chewed,  is  life-getting.  One  must 
eat  enough  and  often  enough,  not  too  much  or  too  often  ; 
and  one  must  fast  in  season. 

Here  poverty  strikes  with  such  cruelty  that  the  pitiful 
challenge  the  goodness  of  an  omnipotent  God.  Or  is  He  not 
omnipotent,  though  perfectly  good  ?  I  have  seen  too  much  of 
life,  too  many  of  the  living,  not  to  know  how  terrible  and  how 
common  the  lack  of  sufficient  good  food  is.  The  starving 
children,  the  overworked  and  underfed  mothers  and  fathers, 
the  graves  of  the  dead  who  died  of  innutrition  and  its  diseases 
are  forever  before  the  city  school  superintendent.2  Lack  of 
proper  food  causes  more  drunkenness  than  all  other  causes 
combined  :  and  drunkenness  causes  more  crimes  than  all 
other  causes  combined.  Poverty  fills  our  jails  and  peniten- 
tiaries ;  and  the  prevention  of  poverty  is  precisely  the  most 
important  and  the  most  difficult  task  of  modern  statesmanship. 

To  sleep  is  to  be  moral.  In  sleep,  one  finds  life.  He 
who  wakes  out  of  sufficient  sleep  is  new  born.  This,  too, 
is  miracle.  Mechanical  explanations  analyze  ;  but  the 
secret  is  beyond  all  analysis.  The  length  and  the  fre- 
quency of  sleep  must  be  such  that  the  body  is  never 
wholly  fatigued.  Dirt,  hunger,  fatigue  ;  these  are  the 
traitors  that  betray  the  body  to  its  enemy,  disease.  The 
"  new  medicine  "  of  the  twentieth  century  is  mainly 

1  "Unfortunately,  while  we  argue  the  question  of  social  responsibility 
against  individual  responsibility,  of  the  paternal  State  against  the  demo- 
cratic with  its  dogma  of  equality  of  opportunity,  children  are  starving  for 
want  of  food.   The  modern  State  cannot  now,  for  its  own  sake,  refuse  to 
provide  that  necessary  physical  nourishment  which  alone  can  make  the 
mental  food  palatable  and  nourishing."    Hughes,  The  Making  of  Citizens, 
p.  24. 

2  Hunter,  Poverty  ;  Spargo,  The  Bitter  Cry  of  the  Children  ;  George, 
Progress  and  Poverty ;   Ghent,    Our   Benevolent  Feudalism ;  Wallace, 
This  Wonderful  Century. 


MORALITY  281 

directed  to  vitalizing  the  blood,  the  life-currents,  —  along 
which  the  soul  flashes  ;  and  for  which  organs,  tissues,  and 
bones  are  but  springs,  channels,  reservoirs,  and  niters. 
In  vitalizing  the  blood,  the  first  process  is  cleansing  it 
in  sleep. 

To  waken  any  one  is  a  sin,  but  especially  to  waken  a  grow- 
ing child.1  To  prevent  sleep  by  noise  or  by  disturbance,  by 
excitement  or  by  stimulant  of  whatsoever  kind,  alcohol  or  drug 
or  narcotic,  is  fullness  of  sin  ;  it  is  malice  against  life.  To  go 
to  bed  early  enough  to  insure  sufficient  time  for  sleep  is  a 
moral  duty.  Many  a  sick  child  and  man  has  died  because  of 
violent  awakening. 

In  a  certain  city,  a  sleepy  physician  took  a  strong  drink  to 
get  himself  awake  to  finish  the  duties  of  the  day ;  and  the 
day  was  very  long.  He  was  in  bed  that  night  but  two  hours. 
His  appetite  for  food  slackened.  Three  days  of  increasing 
duties  and  of  increasing  alcoholic  stimulants  followed.  A 
change  in  the  weather  brought  on  a  chill ;  still  other  drinks  ; 
a  cold  night  ride  to  visit  a  distant  patient ;  and  pneumonia 
set  in.  Ten  physicians  and  four  nurses  fought  for  him  for 
two  days,  when  death  came.  And  a  hospital  had  to  secure  a 
new  chief-surgeon,  a  city  a  new  mayor,  and  hundreds  of  homes 
a  new  family  physician  ;  all  for  want  of  sleep. 

American  economic  life,  especially  in  factories  and 
mines,  upon  railroads  and  railways,  and  American  domes- 
tic life  little  heed  the  requirements  of  the  body  to  rest 
in  sleep.  Therefore,  the  regime  must  pass.  Into  what 
it  shall  pass,  no  man  can  yet  see.  But  human  nature 
cannot  and  will  not  endure  its  present  burdens.  It  is  the 
ending  of  an  era. 

The  human  body  is  periodic 2  and  regular  in  its  pro- 
cesses. It  needs  a  day  in  every  seven  for  rest,  and  bene- 
fits by  two  days,  one  of  rest,  one  of  change.  The  body 
is  not  a  machine,  but  an  organism.  On  the  seventh  day, 

1  Curtis,  Nature  and  Health,  p.  297. 

2  This  periodicity  is  of  day  and  night,  of  weeks,  of  moon-months,  of 
seasons,  and  of  terms  of  years.     Cf.  Hall,  Adolescence,  chapter  vii. 


282  THE    EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

"them  shalt  not  do  any  work,"  thou  nor  thy  wife  nor  thy 
son  nor  thy  clerk  nor  thy  hireling  :  it  is  the  moral  law, 
founded  in  the  human  body. 

The  sin  of  our  economic  regime  that  forces  millions 
of  women  to  work  under  overseers,  in  defiance  of  their 
periodic  life,  often  when  bearing  or  nursing  children,  is 
upon  this  people,  upon  our  legislators,  upon  our  educat- 
ors as  well  as  upon  our  manufacturers,  our  merchants, 
our  consumers,  and  upon  our  husbands.1  And  the  retri- 
bution is  as  certain  as  history  is  certain.  Who  cares 
whether  the  babies  perish  and  the  mothers  grow  faint 
and  fade  away  ?  Examine  the  statistics.  Read  the  tale 
of  past  nations.  Go  about  among  the  people.  He  who 
knows  the  truth,  who  has  seen  things  as  they  were  and 
are  knows  who  He  is  that  cares. 

There  are  moral  laws  of  Property,  of  the  Family,  of 
the  Church,  of  the  State,  of  the  School,  of  Culture,  of 
Occupation,  of  Business,  and  of  General  Society.  Only 
war  has  no  moral  law  : 2  "all  is  fair  in  war."  War  is  the 
antitheme  of  every  moral  law,  for  it  destroys  life,  cus- 
toms, habits,  social  relations,  and  affection,  and  sets  in 
their  places  death  and  ruin,  pain  and  hatred. 

The  physical  laws  of  morality  are  personal.  All  others 
are  social  in  origin,  personal  in  application.  To  sleep,  to 
eat,  to  bathe ;  these  the  solitary  man  on  an  island  ought 
to  do  regularly  and  frequently,  that  he  may  be  inwardly 
and  outwardly  clean  and  full  of  health.  But  to  him  most 
other  moral  laws  are  "dead  letter,"  for  he  has  no  neigh- 
bors to  love  and  to  help.  Where  two  or  three  are 
gathered,  there  comes  in  the  new  and  larger  morality. 
The  lonely  hermit  has  no  property  of  his  own  to  preserve, 
no  property  of  others  to  respect,  for  property  is  a  social 
institution.  He  may  have  religion,  but  can  have  no 

1  Particularly,  upon  our  publicists  and  thinkers. 

*  "  It  is  the  strain  of  murder  that  is  the  inheritance  of  the  sons  of  men." 
Joubert,  TTte  Tsar  as  He  is,  p.  293. 


MORALITY  283 

church  ;  may  exercise  some  art,  but  can  engage  in  no 
commerce. 

Property  is  either  real  or  personal :  in  general,  real 
estate  is  land,  and  personalty  is  everything  else.1  Now, 
in  a  civilized  society  nearly  every  birth  is  due  to,  or  at 
least  qualified  by,  the  assurance  of  its  conditions  and  the 
expectation  of  its  continuance.  I  am  not  merely  con- 
ditioned by  my  environment,  I  am  in  reality  produced 
by  it.  This  environment,  therefore,  this  civilized  society 
owes  me  perhaps  not  a  share  in  its  rights  and  goods,  but 
surely  owes  certain  rights  and  goods.  What  society 
owes  to  the  individual,  whose  coming  into  life  it  causes,2 
constitutes  both  the  total  social  obligation  to  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  total  personal  right  as  against  society. 
Morality  requires  the  performance  of  this  obligation  by 
the  acknowledgment  of  this  right,  and  by  action  accord- 
ingly. And  the  requirement  is  more  than  merely  the 
vaunted  "democratic  equality  of  opportunity." 

What  the  total  obligation  is,  of  course,  conditions  the 
total  right ;  and  is  itself  conditioned  by  the  nature  of 
the  society.  We  have  heard  so  much  of  the  duty  of  the 
individual  to  society  and  of  the  rights  of  society  against 
the  individual,  that  this  argument  may  perhaps  find 
some  difficulty  of  lodgment  in  minds  that  almost  inevit- 
ably have  prejudged  and  closed  the  case.  Because  of 
society,  indeed  by  the  very  force  of  social  precept  and 
example,  of  social  organization  and  operation,  men  and 
women  marry  and  beget  offspring  and  are  enabled  to 
rear  them. 

We  may  classify  civilized  societies  in  two  groups,  — 

1  For  the  legal  distinctions  and  exceptions  vide  Washburn,  Real  Pro- 
perty ;  Gray,  Cases  in  Real  Property. 

2  Of  all  the  thoughtlessness  of  mankind,  there  is  perhaps  nothing 
more  common  or  striking  than  the  absence  of  thought  that  I,  the  indi- 
vidual, am  here,  because  antecedent  social  conditions  permitted  my  birth 
and  rearing.     Reverence  for  the  Past  is  but  filial  gratitude  to  the  true 
parent  of  us  all.     Cf.  Plato,  Laws,  xii. 


284  THE    EVIDENCES   OF  EDUCATION 

those  which  have  already  turned  all  their  lands  over  to 
private  ownership  and  those  which  still  have  unoccupied 
public  lands  in  their  vicinage.  With  private  property  in 
land  what  it  now  is,  — the  right  by  title,  guaranteed  by 
government  law  and  force,  to  exclude  all  others  irrespect- 
ive of  the  owners'  use  or  mode  of  use  of  the  property 
and  irrespective  of  the  use  proposed  by  all  others  (save 
in  certain  instances,  when  the  property  may  be  taken  by 
condemnation  proceedings),  —  the  first  group  of  commun- 
ities must  contain  two  classes  of  citizens,  the  landed  and 
the  landless,  the  "rich,"  so-called,  and  the  proletariat. 

But  every  child  born  into  life  has  a  natural  right  to 
place,  to  sunlight,  to  air,  and  to  water,  —  that  is,  a  natural 
right  to  life.  To  that  end,  God  gave  the  life  in  the  womb. 
And  every  child  has  a  social  right  to  a  mother's  milk  and 
to  a  mother's  care  and  to  that  minimum  of  support, 
preparation,  and  opportunity  which  will  enable  him  or 
her  to  live  out  a  normal  term  of  years. 

Every  right  is  a  minimum  of  expectancy  of  the  per- 
sistence of  conditions ;  which  is  to  say  that  every  right 
is  a  vested  right.  Every  right  is  a  psychological  condi- 
tion resultant  from  a  sociological  situation.  The  denial 
of  a  right  is,  therefore,  a  mental  shock,  from  which  men- 
tal insanity  may,  and  not  seldom  does,  result.  This  is 
equally  true  whether  the  right  is  based  on  conditions 
clearly  of  ethical  advantage  to  society  or  to  the  individ- 
ual, or  is  based  on  conditions  more  or  less  injurious  to 
all  concerned. 

No  child  yet  born  has  failed  to  be  surprised  when  he  learns 
that  his  parents  do  not  own  their  "  own  house  "  or  quarters, 
but  must  pay  rent  to  a  landlord  for  them.  When  he  first  learns 
that  the  "  house  "  is  not  "  mine  "  or  "  ours,"  a  shock  results 
from  which  there  is  no  moral  recovery.  To  this  child,  home 
and  property  are  terms  with  false  meanings  thereafter.  Born 
with  the  idea  of  absolute  right  in  his  birthplace,  the  right 
expressed  in  the  popular  saying,  "  An  Englishman's  house  is 


MORALITY  285 

his  castle,"  once  let  him  realize  that  he  is  but  a  wanderer  and 
sojourner,  and  his  universe  has  lost  its  centre.  It  is  not  pos- 
sible to  measure  how  much  immorality  is  due  to  this  unmoor- 
ing of  life.1 

Wife-beating  is  a  right  in  various  countries.  In  a  certain 
city  of  the  East,  a  wife-beater  and  the  frequently  beaten  wife 
were  haled  into  court  by  the  neighbors  for  disturbing  the 
public  peace.  When  sentenced  and  fined,  the  husband  broke 
down  utterly.  His  "  liberty  "  had  been  taken  away,  his  family 
disintegrated.  The  wife  was  scarcely  less  moved  from  her 
foundations.  The  effect  upon  her  was  that  of  suddenly  giving 
sight  to  the  blind,  while  that  upon  him  was  like  the  loss  of 
an  oar  by  a  boatman  in  a  swift  current. 

Much  of  the  progress  of  society  depends  upon  the 
reduction  of  rights  ;  not  the  restoration  of  a  simple  prim- 
itive equality,  but  the  construction  of  an  elaborate  civil- 
ized equality.  And  yet  the  rest  of  the  progress  of  society 
depends  upon  the  maintenance  of  the  essential  rights, 
inhering  in  man  from  birth  by  virtue  of  the  human  or 
even  the  more  ancient  animal  nature.  Such  a  right,  in- 
disputable, though  often  denied,  in  fact,  is  the  right  to 
a  part  of  the  earth  for  room  to  live,  to  breathe,  to  eat,  to 
marry,  to  sleep,  to  die.  Society  organized  in  the  universal 
institution  of  government  has  permitted,  indeed  has 
encouraged  the  partition  of  all  the  land  to  the  living,  and 
then  has  encouraged  their  multiplication  by  promoting 
marriage,  peace,  and  hygiene.  A  transformation,  there- 
fore, begins  immediately.  The  added  generations  and 
the  unsuccessful  are,  or  become,  landless.  Society  soon 
consists  of  landlords  and  tenants,  only  a  few  being  house- 
owners  without  tenantry.  In  the  cities,  the  multitude 
must  pay  at  stated  intervals  to  privileged  individuals 
various  sums  of  money  for  the  use  of  their  privilege  to 

1  "  Whilst  another  man  has  no  land,  my  title  to  mine,  your  title  to 
yours,  is  at  once  vitiated."  Emerson,  "Man  the  Reformer,"  Nature,  Ad- 
dresses, and  Lectures. 


286  THE    EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

exclude  them  from  the  land,  that  is,  they  must  pay  for 
the  right  to  live  upon  land,  a  right,  be  it  repeated,  that  is 
inherent  in  life  itself. 

A  certain  philosophic  defense  has  been  attempted,  to  the  ef- 
fect that  rent-payment  is  commutation  of  war  avoided  or  fore- 
gone. The  new-born  babe  is  not  required  to  fight  for  a  spot 
upon  which  to  go  on  breathing,  but  by  a  money-payment 
from  his  parents  may  commute  the  natural  necessity  to  fight. 

Of  course,  that  defense  of  the  advantage  taken  by  private 
property  apologists  of  true  economic  rent  (the  Ricardian  rent 
of  "the  dismal  science"),  which  says  that  there  is  plenty  of 
"  no-rent  land,"  is  both  fallacious  and  malicious.  It  is  fal- 
lacious in  that  there  is  literally  no  land  in  America  without 
an  owner  who  does  not  exclude  all  trespassers.  There  may 
be  land  earning  no  real  economic  rent,  but  there  is  none  to  be 
had  for  homestead  use  without  price  for  fee-simple  or  for  an- 
nual or  other  hire.  The  price  may  be  very  low ;  but  the  argu- 
ment in  the  main  text  asserts  that  the  right  to  breathing- 
space  is  absolute,  and  therefore  the  space  must  be  as  free 
as  life  itself;  which  life  the  Creator  makes  compulsory  for 
sane  men  and  women  and  children.  Such  is  the  fallacy. 
The  malice  consists  in  this  :  Man  is  by  nature  gregarious.  In 
this  age,  the  horde  does  not  run  in  the  fields  or  make  clearings 
in  the  forests,  dwelling  in  a  communism  that  would  be  indeed 
anachronous  ;  but  it  settles  in  the  town,  which  grows  into  the 
city  perforce  of  modern  domestic  and  international  peace 
and  of  industrial  progress.  Private  property,  extending  itself 
beyond  any  ancient  powers  of  savage  force  or  feudal  custom  by 
means  of  documentary  titles  and  constitutional  government, 
fines  mankind  for  our  strongest  and  most  commendable  char- 
acteristic, our  joy  in  neighborliness,  our  sociability,  our  abso- 
lutely necessary  desire  "  to  get  together,"  and  universal  habit 
of  doing  so.1 

The  moral  law  of  society  is,  therefore,  prescriptive  of 

1  I  propose  no  remedy.  The  disease  is  political  and  legal  in  its  origin, 
not  educational.  But  I  see  no  prospect  of  relief  through  either  socialism 
or  anarchy.  The  problem  appears  to  be  rather  municipal  than  national. 


MORALITY  287 

the  right  of  every  individual  to  land,  —  that  is,  free  land. 
This  is  proper  to  him.  Decency  requires  the  recogni- 
tion by  society  of  this  right. 

What  else  the  moral  law  of  society  prescribes  with 
respect  to  the  institution  of  Property  is  comparatively 
clear.  Every  individual  has  the  right  to  his  own  product 
and  to  gifts  of  the  products  of  others ;  and  he  has  no 
right  to  anything  more.  Stated  otherwise,  the  moral  law 
assures  no  right  to  levy  upon  the  products  or  services  of 
others,  no  right  to  get  from  other  individuals  something 
for  nothing. 

In  a  genuine  morality,  a  morality  without  hypocrisy, 
a  morality  willing  to  see  things  as  Jesus  saw  them,  we 
are  brought  face  to  face  with  this  law,  —  "  Come,  follow 
Me,"  *  who  have  nothing.  "  Give  us  this  day  our  daily 
bread."  "The  laborer  is  worthy  of  his  hire;"2  and  to 
every  man  a  penny  a  day.3 

In  these  days  of  new  and  strange  extensions  of  private 
property,  the  pretensions  of  the  beneficiaries  become  im- 
moral, and  provoke  barbarous  reprisals  by  the  victims  ; 
but  the  worst  result  is  the  setting-in  of  racial  degenera- 
tion, strictly  inevitable  when  essential  rights  are  violated. 
We  need  to  think  what  wealth  may  properly  be  private. 
When  we  shall  have  formed  a  more  correct  definition,  and 
when  men  working  in  governments  shall  have  recon- 
structed law  to  conform  to  morality,  then  we  may  all 
become  once  more  admirers  and  respecters  of  private 
property  as  it  really  is.4  Property  that  is  really  wealth 
proper  to  the  possessor  is  the  bedrock  of  civilization, 
more  ancient  and  more  necessary  than  marriage  and 

1  Luke,  Gospel,  xviii,  22. 

2  Luke,  Gospel,  x,  7,  where  the  hire  is  lodging,  eating,  and  drinking. 

3  Matthew,  Gospel,  xx,  9. 

4  "  The  happiness  of  a  people  depends  upon  the  degree  of  promptitude 
with  which  the  gulf  between  social  necessities  and  established  law  is  nar- 
rowed."   Maine,  Ancient  Law,  p.  23. 


288  THE   EVIDENCES   OF  EDUCATION 

family.  Respecting  such  true  property,  secured  by  effort 
or  by  free  gift,  and  not  by  stealing,  direct  or  indirect, 
open  or  covert,  the  moral  law  is  against  not  only  actually 
stealing  it  but  against  even  coveting  it,  as  Moses  said 
more  than  two  millenniums  ago.1 

As  the  moral  law  regarding  Property  is  social,  involv- 
ing at  least  two,  so  also  is  the  Family.  We  have  now 
risen  one  stage  higher  in  the  social  scale.  The  Fam- 
ily is  a  physical  relation  of  parent  and  child,  mother 
and  father,  publicly  acknowledged  throughout  life,  so 
that  in  an  advanced  society  the  physical  aspect  is  subor- 
dinated to  the  free  recognition  of  the  relationship,  which 
thereby  becomes  idealized  or,  as  we  say,  spiritualized. 
History  has  known  many  varieties  of  the  Family,  —  the 
polyandrous,  the  polygynous,  the  patriarchal,  the  matri- 
archal, and  the  monogamous,  free  and  strict.  Christian 
civilization  in  the  West  has  indorsed  the  monogamous 
Family,  and  is  now  struggling  with  the  vital  question 
whether  or  not  to  permit  not  contemporaneous  but  suc- 
cessive polygamies  through  the  marriage  of  divorced 
persons. 

In  building  up  the  strictly  monogamous  Family  (di- 
vorce and  even  separation  denied  in  State  and  in  Church) 
five  ideals  have  been  developed,  unique  in  the  history  of 
animal  life  upon  the  earth  and  of  singular  portent. 
These  five  ideals  appeared  in  this  order,  —  female  vir- 
ginity, female  chastity,  male  chastity,  male  virginity, 
and  continence  in  marriage.  These  severe  ideals  have 
had  an  exactly  opposite  effect  upon  population  from  that 
which  might  have  been  anticipated.  The  more  closely 
and  generally  they  have  been  maintained,  the  more 
numerous  have  been  the  births,  the  longer  the  lives,  and 
the  lower  the  death-rates.  Prostitution,  a  notion  beyond 
the  understanding  of  a  primitive  horde,  developed  in 

1  This  is  said  without  prejudice  as  to  whether  or  not  Moses  wrote 
Exodus  and  revealed  the  Decalogue,  as  many  believe. 


MORALITY  289 

polyandrous  and  polygamous  societies  into  the  dignity 
of  a  religious  ceremony,  to  descend  in  monogamous  soci- 
eties to  a  concealed  and  ashamed  commercial  activity, 
and  has  at  last  been  put  under  the  ban  of  the  public 
law,  surviving  as  "the  social  evil."  Almost  equally 
abashed  though  not  yet  equally  rebuked,  male  wanton- 
ness is  declining.  The  moral  law  is  not  yet  fully  clear 
on  all  the  matters  involved.  But  society  is  beginning  to 
see  that  to  call  into  life  a  human  being  whom  the  parents 
cannot  properly  support  and  educate  is  a  sin,  and  that 
for  society  to  neglect  a  child,  even  though  thus  actually 
brought  into  life,  is  a  yet  greater  sin.  And  society,  more 
or  less  consciously  and  conscientiously,  approves  the  life 
of  that  man  or  woman  to  whom  marriage  is  a  sacrament 
and  a  covenant  before  God  and  man,  to  be  fulfilled  with 
absolute  honor.  The  excuses  prevalent  a  hundred  years 
ago,  in  certain  regions  of  Christendom,  and  among  cer- 
tain classes  of  religious  and  secular  mep  and  even  women, 
for  promiscuity  before  marriage  are  no  longer  made  pub- 
licly. An  equal  faithfulness  is  demanded  of  both  man 
and  woman,  and  celibacy  is  required  to  be  synonymous 
with  virginity.  And  everywhere  celibacy  is  discouraged. 
It  is  a  curious  and  apparently  contradictory  movement 
in  an  age  of  the  economic  freedom  of  woman.  These 
movements  conspire  for  the  equality  of  the  sexes. 

On  this  foundation  of  clean  marriage,  there  is  built  the 
new  moral  law  that  every  parent  owes  to  every  child  an 
education,  and  that  the  State  is  a  proper  social  instru- 
ment to  give  to  the  child  such  an  education,  taxing  (par- 
tially confiscating)  any  property  for  that  purpose. 

There  are  other  moral  laws  of  the  Family.  To  the 
father  and  mother  who  work  to  support  and  care  for 
their  children  until  they  are  able  decently  to  care  for 
themselves,  the  children  owe  obedience  and  faith.  And 
grown  sons  and  daughters,  not  invalid,  owe  to  aged  or 
otherwise  invalid  parents  support  in  their  infirmity.  In 


290  THE  EVIDENCES  OF  EDUCATION 

this  age  of  the  dispersion  of  families,  many  have  for- 
gotten that  "  blood  is  thicker  than  water ; "  and  bro- 
thers and  sisters,  not  to  mention  uncles  and  nephews, 
aunts  and  nieces  and  cousins,  of  one  or  two  removes, 
seldom  recognize  relationship  as  of  any  special  moment. 
Lineal  descent  seems  alone  to  count ;  and  modern  moral- 
ity scarcely  enforces  the  ancient  family  affection. 
Whether  this  can  be  recovered  without  the  pressure  of 
an  era  of  severe  social  distress  through  famine,  riot,  or 
war,  is  doubtful ;  but  that  in  losing  the  diffused  affec- 
tions of  the  ancient  patriarchal  family  society  has  lost 
not  only  one  of  its  charms  but  also  one  of  its  sources  of 
strength  is  certain. 

There  are  moral  laws  of  religion  unrecognized  by 
millions  to-day.  Religion  is,  of  course,  not  synonymous 
with  the  Church ;  and  may  not  be  coterminous  with  it. 
Religion  is  capable  of  various  definitions.  But  whether 
we  call  it  a  sense  of  the  disposition  of  the  Universe  (or 
God)  toward  ourselves,1  or  belief  in  the  ultimate  con- 
servation of  values,2  or  desire  to  be  holy,3  or  indeed  any- 
thing else  that  recognizes  its  essential  property,  which 
is  the  consciousness  of  relation  between  the  whole  and 
man,  sound  morality  requires  that  every  person  should 
deliberately  and  constantly  keep  in  mind  that  relation- 
ship, and  act  in  accordance  with  whatever  light  may  issue 
from  this  consciousness  of  himself  as  part  of  a  whole.  In 
the  terms  of  the  Christian  religion,  morality  requires 
obedience  to  conscience,  and  also  persistent  effort  to 
enlighten  conscience  with  all  truth. 

Now  the  relation  of  the  Church  to  religion  is  that,  in 
any  given  age  and  land  the  Church  displays  its  institution, 
and  constitutes  its  objective  realization  or  embodiment, 

1  Perry,  Approach  to  Philosophy,  chapter  iii. 

J  Hoffding  (Fisher),  The  Problems  of  Philosophy,  Editor's  Introduction. 
8  Watson,  The  Philosophy  of  Kant  (excerpts),  p.  294,  Critique  of  the 
Practical  Reason. 


MORALITY  291 

of  course,  always  imperfectly.  And  the  peculiarities  of 
this  particular  age  and  land  —  America  in  the  first 
decades  of  the  twentieth  century  —  are  that  religion  is 
not  a  universal  activity,  but  only  partial,  and  that  even 
the  religious  do  not  all  unite  in  one  general  Church. 
We  have,  it  is  true,  so  far  as  we  have  any  religion  at  all, 
apparently  but  one  religion,  Christianity.  And  yet  be- 
neath the  appearance  certain  differences  of  moment  are 
discovered.  We  have  Judaism,  the  mother-religion  of 
Christianity ;  Roman  Catholic  Christianity  with  its  his- 
torical desire  for  universality ;  Protestantism  with  its 
hierarchical,  presbyterian,  and  democratic  sects ;  Mor- 
monism  with  its  desire  to  reunite  Church  and  State,  a 
pseudo-Christianity  of  portentous  menace ;  and  miscella- 
neous sects  from  Ethical  Culture  to  the  religious  com- 
munities and  from  Christian  Science  to  the  basest  sor- 
ceries.1 Woven  in  among  all  these,  there  are  millions  of 
atheists,  infidels,  secularists,  of  every  shade  from  those 
who  forget  God,  though  treating  His  creatures  fairly,  to 
those  who  despise  Him  and  hate  His  children  and  all 
His  works. 

In  such  an  era,  needing  religious  and  moral  regenera- 
tion, and  needing  also,  it  would  appear,  both  religious 
and  moral  unity,  or  at  least  consistency,  the  beginning 
of  social  reform  and  of  personal  education  is  "  the  fear 
of  the  Lord."  It  is  no  doubt  possible  to  worship  God  in 
temples  not  made  with  hands  ; 2  but  man  in  civiliza- 
tion has  chosen  to  erect  houses  of  worship,  —  tem- 
ples, mosques,  kiosks,  synagogues,  churches,  cathedrals. 
Therein  they  gather  regularly  whose  fear  of  the  Lord 
is  not  an  occasional  or  startling  terror,  but  a  humble 
desire  to  know  His  will  and  to  live  in  obedience  to  Him. 

1  Carroll,  The  Religious  Forces  of  the  U.  S.,  passim.    Also,  advertise- 
ments in  metropolitan  newspapers. 

2  Paul,  Acts,  vii,  48.   Bryant,  Forest  Hymn,  has  rich  meaning  in  this 
connection. 


292  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

The  moral  law  requires  such  obedience,  whether  we 
pray  to  God  in  the  closet l  or  openly.  The  moral  law 
requires  such  outward  acts  as  issue  from  a  heart  genu- 
inely responsive  to  the  voice  of  God  in  the  conscience. 
That  the  observances  of  times,  seasons,  missions,  festi- 
vals, fasts,  sacraments,  charities  of  a  religious  nature  con- 
duce to  the  sensitiveness  of  conscience,  few  doubt.  That 
the  Church,  which  organizes  and  maintains  such  observ- 
ances, is  essential  to  the  preservation  of  religion  from 
generation  to  generation,  few  doubt.  And  they  who 
doubt  have  never  shown  themselves  serious  and  anxious 
to  elevate  the  morals  of  mankind,  never.  The  moral  law 
seems,  therefore,  to  require  support  of  the  Church  as 
the  preserver  of  the  forms  and  times  of  religion  and 
worship. 

To  say  this  and  not  more  is  to  represent  the  Church 
as  in  sad  plight.  The  individual  does  owe  allegiance 
to  the  Church  as  the  outward  form  of  religion.  But 
the  Church  has  a  duty  to  the  individual,  to  every  in- 
dividual born  into  the  world,  which,  to  speak  plainly, 
most  of  its  servitors,  clerical  and  lay,  have  neglected  and 
perhaps  forgotten.  The  Church  absolutely  denies  its 
mission  when  it  requires  application  and  examination  for 
membership.  The  Church  is  "the  Bride  of  the  Lamb," 
to  use  the  figure  of  the  Apocalypse.  It  is  the  visible 
symbol  upon  earth  of  the  omnipresent,  eternal,  omni- 
potent God,  who  cannot  forget  one  of  His  children,  not 
even  the  least ;  nay  more,  not  even  the  sparrows.2  The 
Church  must  forego  every  division,  cease  every  exclu- 
sion, and  proceed  to  the  work  of  saving  all.  "  Go  ye, 
preach  the  gospel  to  every  creature."  "Whosoever  will, 
let  him  take  the  water  of  life  freely."  3 

1  A  saying  of  Jesus,  Matthew,  Gospel,  vi,  6. 

2  John,  Revelation,  xix,  7  ;  Jesus,  Matthew,  Gospel,  x,  29. 

1  Mark,  Gospel,  xvi,  15,  the  last  saying  of  Jesus,  according  to  the  oldest 
of  the  Gospels;  John,  Revelation,  xxii,  17. 


MORALITY  293 

Any  view  or  practice  contrary  to  the  text  appears  to 
afford  three  objections  to  its  moral  soundness.  First, 
"  God  hath  made  of  one  blood  all  nations  of  the  earth  " 
is  true  whether  taken  as  a  matter  of  religious  faith  or  of 
scientific  proof,  and  whether  man  be  of  but  one  stock 
or  polygenetic  ;  the  synthesis  of  bodies  and  souls  by 
heredity  is  complete.1  Second,  the  State  aims  at  uni- 
versality. Can  the  Church,  an  older  and  more  widespread 
institution,  do  less  ?  Third,  the  School  is  developing  the 
same  purpose,  drawing  its  inspiration  from  the  Church, 
its  organization  from  the  State.  Is  the  School  to  replace 
the  Church  ? 

In  this  age  and  land,  when  government  is  over  all, 
when  kings  and  outlaws  alike  are  unknown,  the  State, 
which  is  the  objective  expression  of  government,  claims 
and  endeavors  to  enforce  the  allegiance  of  all.  It  is  fight- 
ing for  sincerity  of  soul  with  that  strange  new  interest 
of  mankind,  Business,  which  is  trying  to  subordinate 
government  to  its  own  particular  and  discordant  ends. 
But  the  very  fight  bears  witness  to  the  accepted  prestige 
of  the  State  as  the  dominant  and  paramount  social  insti- 
tution. Said  Edmund  Burke,  a  hundred  years  ago : — 

"  [The  State]  is  a  partnership  in  all  science ;  a  partnership 
in  all  art ;  a  partnership  in  every  virtue,  —  and  in  all  perfec- 
tion. As  the  ends  of  such  a  partnership  cannot  be  obtained 
in  many  generations,  it  becomes  a  partnership  not  only  be- 
tween those  who  are  living,  but  between  those  who  are  living, 
those  who  are  dead,  and  those  who  are  to  be  born.  .  .  .  The 
municipal  corporations  of  that  universal  kingdom  are  not 
morally  at  liberty  at  their  pleasure,  and  on  their  speculations 
of  a  contingent  improvement,  wholly  to  separate  and  tear 
asunder  the  bands  of  their  subordinate  community,  and  to 
dissolve  it  into  an  unsocial,  uncivil,  unconnected  chaos  of 
elementary  principles.  ...  If  that  which  is  only  submission 
to  necessity  should  be  made  the  object  of  choice,  the  law  is 

1  Hall,  Adolescence :  its  Psychology,  chapter  x,  passim . 


294  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

broken,  nature  is  dissolved,  and  the  rebellious  are  outlawed, 
cast  forth,  and  exiled  from  the  world  of  reason,  and  order, 
and  peace,  and  virtue,  and  fruitful  penitence,  into  the  anta- 
gonistic world  of  madness,  discord,  vice,  confusion,  and  un- 
availing sorrow."  1 

The  first  moral  law  of  the  State  is  to  give  security  to 
life,  to  liberty,  and  to  property  (or  to  "the  pursuit  of 
happiness,"  as  Jefferson  phrased  it  in  the  Declaration). 
It  constructs  the  social  order,  its  form  and  substance. 
A  State  that  permits  preventable  injury  to  life  is  im- 
moral. A  State  that  permits  any  form  of  slavery  or  servi- 
tude is  immoral.  A  State  that  permits  preventable  losses 
of  property  or  damage  to  it  —  that  does  not  conserve  all 
true  wealth  and  protect  all  private  and  public  property, 
righteously  produced  and  acquired  —  is  immoral. 

Because  the  State  is  the  intellect  of  modern  society, 
it  requires  for  its  service  the  ablest  men.  The  second 
moral  law  for  the  State  is  to  secure  the  ablest  men  for 
the  conduct  of  its  affairs. 

American  government  —  our  democracy  —  persists  in  the 
two  superstitions,  vox  populi,  vox  Dei,  and  the  least  govern- 
ment the  best  government;  with  their  inevitable  results. 
They  were  exposed  long  ago  by  Plato  and  by  Aristotle ;  and 
they  were  much  discussed  by  the  Fathers  of  this  Republic  in 
the  Constitutional  Convention  of  1 787.2  One  of  these  results 
is  that  we  American  democrats  suppose  that  if  the  legislature 
of  all  the  people  intends  to  legislate  well,  then  all  the  govern- 
ment is  necessarily  good.  To  suppose  this  is  to  be  unmindful 
of  the  fact  that  the  executive  department  is  quite  as  important 
as  the  legislative.3  Another  result  is  that  in  order  to  have 
a  weak  government,  the  common  political  purpose  of  most 
Americans,  very  weak  men  have  been  tolerated  in  office.  In 

1  Reflections  on  the  French  Revolution  ;  also,  William,  Bishop  of  Ar- 
magh, National  Review,  "  Edmund  Burke"  (February,  1906). 

2  Chancellor-Hewes,  The  United  States :  A  History,  vol.  iii,  chapter  x. 

3  As  every  lawyer,  jurist,  and  publicist  knows  :  judges  and  executives 
make  laws  as  well  as  unmake  them. 


MORALITY  295 

Nation,  State,  County,  City,  and  Village,  the  average  intel- 
ligence of  the  officers  scarcely  rises  above  the  average  intelli- 
gence of  successful  business  men.  We  have  had  not  only 
mediocre  Governors  but  mediocre  Presidents,  and  as  for  City 
Aldermen  and  State  Legislatures,  the  facts  are  so  notorious 
as  to  have  become  irritating  commonplaces. 

A  third  moral  law  of  the  State  is  so  to  exercise  its  powers 
and  to  perform  its  functions  as  to  promote  the  welfare 
of  society.  "  Unto  whomsoever  much  is  given,  of  him 
shall  much  be  required,"  1  is  a  saying  quite  as  true  of 
institutions  as  of  individuals.  The  State  is  paramount, 
its  opportunities  are  surpassing,  and  its  responsibilities, 
despite  denials,  are,  therefore,  correspondingly  great  and 
heavy.2  It  is,  of  course,  unwarranted  to  expect  progress 
to  result  uniformly  and  rapidly ;  but  the  excuse,  so  often 
heard,  that  this  Nation  or  State,  County  or  City,  Town 
or  Village  is  no  worse  than  some  other  is  no  more  valid 
for  political  sins  of  omission  or  of  commission  than  are 
the  similar  excuses  of  individuals.  It  is  unnecessary  to 
discuss  here  the  applications  or  the  details  of  this  gen- 
eral principle.  The  moral  law  is  that  to  be  content  with 
things  as  they  are  is  to  deteriorate.  The  statesman, 
whether  ruler  or  subject,  officer  or  voter,  who  has  no  aims 
for  complete  righteousness,  for  a  beautiful  national  and 
domestic  life,  and  for  economic  prosperity  for  all  is  mor- 
ally a  criminal. 

From  these  moral  laws  of  the  State,  there  follow  two  for 
the  individual  as  a  citizen.  Of  these,  the  first  is  the  obli- 
gation of  the  able  and  right-minded  citizen  to  seek  office 
and  serve  in  it  unmindful  of  his  private  interests.  In  a 

1  Jesus,  Luke,  Gospel,  xii,  48.  "  And  to  whom  men  have  committed 
much,  of  him  they  will  ask  the  more." 

2  "  Civilized  mankind  are  aware  of  the  changes  taking  place  in  their 
social  condition  and  do  consciously  and  deliberately  take  measures  for  its 
improvement.    This  consciousness  of  a  corporate  existence  and  of  the 
power  to  direct  social  progress  is  a  new  force  in  human  destiny."  Cairnes, 
Fortnightly  Review,  January,  1875,  P-  71- 


296  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

democracy,  no  man  can  be  a  good  man  who  is  not  ready  to 
be  a  public  man.  This  is  a  hard  doctrine.  No  other  can 
preserve  the  Republic.  It  may  be  that  no  other  can  now 
redeem  the  Republic,  which  requires  the  best  of  us  all. 

The  second  moral  law  for  the  citizen  is  never  to  desire 
the  government  to  serve  his  private  interests,  whether 
with  or  without  detriment  to  others.1  This  law  involves 
the  most  far-reaching  and  the  most  searching  criticisms 
of  things  as  they  are. 

There  are  moral  laws  of  the  School,  whose  business  it 
is,  as  Spencer  said,  to  "prepare  for  complete  living." 
Knowing  well  that  they  are  making  now  and  have  made 
in  the  past  no  effort  to  prepare  all  youth  for  complete 
living,  schoolmasters  and  schoolmistresses  have  always 
regarded  this  ideal  as  academic  rather  than  practical,  as 
intellectual  rather  than  moral.  The  School  has  been 
a  culde  sac  rather  than  a  highroad.  Too  many  of  its  births 
are  abortive,  still-born. 

The  first  moral  law  of  the  School  is  to  prepare  all, 
without  exception,  for  the  largest  life  in  the  greatest 
variety  of  activities,  subject  only  to  the  limitations  of 
each  in  ability,  in  character,  and  in  energy.  This  will  be 
a  life  of  action,  for  the  philosophy  yet  to  be  developed 
from  the  aphorism,  "  I  act,  that  is,  I  am,"  will  yet  exceed 
in  mass  and  in  force  all  the  philosophy  from  the  aphorism 
of  Descartes,  "  I  think,  therefore  I  am." 

The  worst  deficiency  of  the  School  is  its  renunciation  of  duty 
and  responsibility  in  respect  to  all  matters  that  concern  Mar- 
riage, Family,  and  Home.  This  renunciation  is  seen  in  the 
almost  universal  willingness  of  schoolmasters  to  graduate  boys 
and  girls  with  diplomas  signifying  preparation  for  life  (or  at 
least  supposed  so  to  signify)  at  the  close  of  grammar-school 
courses  at  fifteen  years  of  age.  Still  worse  is  the  leaving  of 
school,  often,  be  it  said  with  sorrow  and  shame,  by  the  encour- 
agement of  principals  and  teachers,  at  the  age  of  fourteen  or 

1  Seelye,  Hickok,  Moral  Science,  chapter  ix,f>assim. 


MORALITY  297 

fifteen  from  sixth,  fifth,  even  fourth  and  third-year  grades,  "to 
go  to  work."  Children  who  leave  school  so  young,  so  imma- 
ture, so  ignorant,  often  already  so  discouraged  with  life,  fur- 
nish the  recruits  for  those  pitiful  companies  of  the  envious 
victims  of  human  nature  in  civilization,  —  street-walkers,  har- 
lots, gamins,  hoboes,  petty  thieves,  holdup  men,  —  most  of 
whom  are  under  twenty  years  of  age.  There  are  not  many  of 
these  ?  Their  influence  is  negligible  ?  There  are  more  of  them 
in  every  great  city  than  of  ministers,  lawyers,  physicians,  and 
teachers  combined.  They  "must  live,"  and  they  do  live, 
—  short  lives,  it  is  true,  but  lives  perilously  infectious. 
Visit  the  police  courts,  and  learn  the  truth  about  the 
married  lives  of  the  wretched.  Visit  the  homes  for  "  fallen 
women,"  most  of  whom  are  but  girls  who  should  be  still  at 
school.  Visit  the  slums  and  the  cheaper  theatres  on  Saturday 
evenings ;  and  think  better  of  humanity,  which  endures  so 
much  of  evil,  of  pain,  and  of  ecstasy,  and  yet  persists  in  life.1 

And  remember  that  all  these  men  and  women,  boys  and 
girls  were  born  to  the  common  heritage  of  knowledge,  of  cul- 
ture, of  home,  and  of  freedom.  Deprived  of  that  heritage, 
sometimes  themselves  wantonly  wasting  it,  they  must  live  for 
simply  the  necessity  of  living,  moment  by  moment,  —  aban- 
doned to  the  appetites,  hunger,  warmth,  desire,  the  delight  of 
the  eye,  the  pride  of  life. 

They  are  graduated  from  the  middle  grammar  grades  to  the 
factory,  store,  street,  dance-hall,  saloon,  den,  jail,  and  grave- 
yard. And  priest  and  Levite  and  I  pass  by  on  the  other  side.2 
The  school  has  failed  to  educate  us  as  well  as  them. 

A  second  moral  law  of  the  School  is  to  employ  teachers 
competent  to  interpret  life  in  all  its  phases.  "  No  stream 
can  rise  higher  than  its  source." 

A  third  moral  law  is  to  demand  and  to  enforce  ade- 
quate support  for  itself.  Any  other  course  is  hypocrisy.3 
The  present  situation  in  which  the  average  teacher  is 

1  The  reaction  from  all  this  is  reflected  in  the  novels  of  the  times  :  e.  g. 
Tolstoi,  Resurrection  ;  Henry,  The  Unwritten  Law. 

2  Jesus,  Luke,  Gospel,  x,  30. 

3  Chancellor,  Our  Schools,  chapters  xiv,  xv,  and  xvi. 


298  THE   EVIDENCES    OF  EDUCATION 

a  girl,  looking  to  marriage  for  escape  and  burdening  her 
relatives  for  at  least  a  part  of  her  support,  is  an  histor- 
ical and  an  economic  absurdity. 

A  fourth  moral  law  is  to  regard  its  own  rights  to  equal- 
ity with  every  other  social  institution.  It  must  insist 
upon  service  by  an  independent  profession,  exercising 
entire  control  in  it.  Under  lay  domination,  the  public 
school  at  least,  if  not  also  the  private  and  the  endowed, 
is  only  a  pseudo-school.  In  respect  to  education,  every 
person  who  is  not  an  educator,  formally  recognized  as 
such  by  other  educators,  is  a  layman. 

There  is  a  moral  law  for  the  educator,  flowing  out  of 
his  relation  to  the  School ;  and  this  moral  law  requires 
him  to  live  like  a  man  in  the  world  of  men.  The  exceed- 
ing deference  of  schoolmen  and  schoolwomen  to  their 
political  superiors,  and  sometimes  even  to  parents,  is 
treachery  to  the  cause  of  education,  betrayal  of  the  rights 
of  children  and  youth,  confession  of  the  untruth  of  the 
claim  of  fitness  to  prepare  the  young  for  life. 

So  varied  is  culture,  so  numerous  are  the  cultures,  that 
it  is  not  easy  to  discern  the  moral  law  therein.1  Culture, 
Philosophy,  whatever  we  call  the  summum  of  human 
knowledge,  —  all  sciences  and  arts,  the  science  of  sci- 
ences, and  the  art  of  arts,  —  affords,  has  always  afforded, 
and  will  always  afford  the  supreme  problems  to  the 
supreme  intellects.  Were  the  problems  ever  solved,  new 
ones  would  be  presented  ;  hitherto  these  supreme  pro- 
blems have  not  been  solved. 

There  are,  however,  discernible  moral  laws  for  Culture 
as  an  institution  and  for  cultured  men  and  women. 

The  first  of  these  laws  is  to  preserve  the  true,  the 
good,  and  the  beautiful.  In  whatever  form  Culture  mani- 
fests itself,  the  law  holds  :  whether  the  form  be  the  Uni- 
versity, the  Drama,  Literature,  Art,  or  Music.  Obedience 
to  the  law  requires  not  only  intelligence  and  good  faith, 

1  Carlyle,  Sartor  Resartus :  "  The  Everlasting  Aye." 


MORALITY  299 

qualities  common  among  the  cultured,  but  also  courage 
and  patience  and  self-denial,  elemental  qualities  that 
Culture  seems  to  neglect,  sometimes  even  to  eradicate.1 

Culture  shrinks  from  battle.  It  has  grown  refined 
and  suffers  pain  from  the  din  and  the  flame,  the  pain 
and  the  blood  of  conflict.  Yet  the  good,  the  true,  and 
the  beautiful  can  be  preserved  in  an  ignorant  and  wicked 
world,  and  have  been  preserved,  only  by  the  self-denial, 
the  patience,  and  the  courage  of  the  cultured.  In  truth, 
that  is  not  true  culture  which  is  not  able  to  attack 
whatever  is  false,  evil,  or  hideous,  and  anxious  to 
defend  whatever  is  true,  good,  or  beautiful.  In  respect 
to  morality,  Culture  is  self-containing.  It  is  not  a  goal, 
but  a  course  upon  which  mankind  goes  forward  to  the 
completeness  designed  for  us  by  the  Creator. 

A  second  moral  law  for  Culture  is  to  seek  these 
excellent  things  everywhere  and  always,  and  gladly  to 
recognize  them.  This  is  a  hard  saying :  Truth  is  often 
destructive  of  much  that  hitherto  has  passed  for  Culture. 
It  is  often  unpleasant  to  champion  the  new.2  Beauty  is 
often  found  where  Culture  is  least  inclined  to  look  for 
it.  And  Goodness  may  appear  anywhere,  —  not  the 
goodness,  it  is  true,  always  of  the  great  but  often  of  the 
little  things  of  life.  In  democracy,  Culture  must  walk 
not  only  where  the  rich  and  the  powerful  and  the  learned 
resort,  but  also  by  the  countryside  and  in  the  city  slum. 
Culture  must  go  wherever  men  are  ;  it  is  not  only  to  be 
sought,  it  must  itself  seek. 

A  third  moral  law  of  Culture  is  to  give  itself  freely 

1  I  have  examined  book  on  book  dealing  with  ethics  and  morals.   I  have 
yet  to  discover  one  that  tells  the  truth  that  courage  is  the  first,  the  basic, 
the  absolutely  essential,  and  the  only  essential,  virtue. 

2  Cf.  "  Blessed  are  ye,  when  men  shall  revile  you,  and  persecute  you, 
and  shall  say  all  manner  of  evil  against  you  falsely,  for  my  sake.  Rejoice, 
and  be  exceeding  glad."   Jesus,  Matthew,  Gospel,  v,  II,  12.    Common  and 
virulent  abuse  test  and  witness  the  only  real  courage.   Men  speak  well 
only  of  (i  the  false  prophets." 


300  THE   EVIDENCES   OF  EDUCATION 

and  commonly,  to  spend  and  to  be  spent  in  the  cause  of 
humanity.  Whatever  it  gathers,  it  must  spread.  And  in 
the  modern  mind  only  that  Culture  is  Godlike  which, 
like  God  the  Giver,  loseth  its  own  life,  careless  whether  it 
may  ever  find  the  life  again. 

The  University  exists  not  for  itself,  but  for  the  Truth ;  and 
for  the  Truth  only  because  man  needs  truth.  Whatever  truth 
the  University  knows  it  must  dispense  as  truly  as  possible. 
Literature  is  under  the  same  law.  In  the  ideal  State,  there- 
fore, all  Religion,  all  Art,  all  Science,  all  Drama,  all  News, 
all  Literature,  all  Music  will  be  as  free  as  the  highroad,  the 
elementary  school,  the  mother's  care,  and  the  air  itself  now  are. 

"  That  day,  how  it  shines  afar !  " 

But  the  highway  could  not  be  made  free  until  the  men  who 
traveled  it  had  learned  to  go  about  peacefully  and  orderly, 
until  they  were  worthy  of  its  freedom  and  fit  for  its  society.1 

Culture  must  be  faithful  to  its  trust,  catholic  in  its 
taste,  and  generous  in  its  spirit ;  and  it  must  be  more. 
It  must  be  patient  with  ignorance  and  with  weakness, 
sympathetic  with  every  manner  of  inferiority,  whether 
of  will  or  of  feeling,  of  intellect  or  of  opportunity,  and 
urgent  only  of  that  which  is  fit  and  right  in  the  pre- 
mises. Upon  this  high  range  of  human  power  and  skill 
and  feeling,  Culture  must  walk  discreet  as  well  as  right- 
eous, kind  as  well  as  just,  not  condescending  and  yet  not 
equal ;  for  there  is  no  unkindness  more  harsh  than  that 
which  demands  of  the  less  what  only  the  greater  can 
perform. 

It  is  a  moral  law  for  Culture  to  be  charitable  ;  more- 
over, it  is  a  graceless  spectacle  for  Culture  to  appear 
wanting  in  charity.  We  expect  of  Culture  every  charm, 
as  we  expect  the  diamond  to  be  flawless  in  its  substance 

1  Similarly,  the  railroad  —  the  modern  highway  —  cannot  be  made  free 
until  men  are  fit  to  travel  freely  upon  it. 


MORALITY  301 

and  form,  and  the  rose  to  be  perfect  in  its  fragrance  and 
beauty.  For  the  man  or  woman  of  true  culture  knows 
how  infinite  the  world  is,  how  great  and  beneficent  was 
that  series  of  good  fortunes  by  which  even  his  or  her 
little  culture  has  been  made  possible,  how  every  moment 
spent  upon  this  or  that  truth  has  been  taken  away  from 
all  other  truth,  and  how  frail  is  the  hold  of  the  mind 
upon  its  treasures.  There  are  never  two  persons  of  like 
or  equal  culture  in  all  the  world,  nor  ever  have  been. 
Men  and  women  of  culture  stand  upon  the  outermost 
circumference  of  the  sphere  of  humanity,  to  whose  cen- 
tre the  ignorant  and  the  mediocre  must  cling.  They  are 
like  plateaus  or  mountain  peaks  thrust  into  the  blue,  — 
radiations  tending  ever  to  greater  remoteness  from  com- 
mon human  lives.  Moreover,  their  bases  are  the  rock  of 
this  same  humanity  by  which  they  are  supported.  In  the 
very  nature  of  culture,  it  is  economically  parasitic,  based 
upon  substance.  The  man  of  culture  cannot  eat  bread 
in  the  sweat  of  his  own  brow. 

Consider  that  high  mountain.  First  to  catch  the  sunrise 
of  the  new  day,  it  is  last  to  reflect  the  sunset  of  the  old  day. 
It  rises  firm  and  solid,  high  into  the  blue  of  heaven.  Its 
base  is  skirted  by  pleasant  valleys,  its  sides  are  green  with 
forests,  upon  its  top  lies  the  white  snow,  while  around  it  flock 
the  gleaming  clouds.  Beneath  it  is  the  mighty  earth,  with  its 
rock  crust  and  white-hot  core,  rotating  on  its  axis,  revolving 
in  its  planetary  course,  whirling  with  all  the  rest  of  the  solar 
system  upon  its  path  through  this  special  universe.  The 
mountain  seems  so  strong  that  we  imagine  it  eternal.  And 
yet  we  know  that  in  truth  there  are  no  "  everlasting  hills." 
Wind,  rain,  ice,  faulting,  compression  are  reducing  its  mass 
and  lowering  it  to  the  common  flat ;  and  the  end  is  certain. 
To-day  the  mountain  stands,  symbol  of  the  majesty  of  God, 
expressing  the  laws  by  which  He  manifests  Nature,  laws  of 
gravitation,  of  centrifugal  and  centripetal  forces,  of  atomic 
valence  and  molecular  cohesion,  of  heat,  of  electricity,  of 
light,  of  vibrations,  of  periodicity,  of  sound,  of  all  manner 


302  THE    EVIDENCES    OF   EDUCATION 

of  attractions  and  repulsions,  because  of  which  the  mountain 
with  its  snows  and  rains  and  clouds,  with  its  now  sun-kissed, 
now  starlit,  now  cloud-crowned  head,  is.  Destroy  one  of  these 
laws,  and  the  beneficent,  solid,  glorious  mountain  is  not. 

So  with  Culture.  Take  from  it  the  love  of  Truth  or  the 
sense  of  Beauty  or  devotion  to  the  Good  or  sympathy  with 
Mankind,  and  the  culture  is  an  illusion,  a  fog,  a  miasma. 

There  are  moral  laws  of  Occupation,  which  is  the 
mode  of  the  industrial  arts  ;  that  is,  Culture  in  the  con- 
crete ;  objective  or  real  Culture.  The  distinction  be- 
tween Art  (the  fine  arts)  and  industrial  culture  is  not 
that  Art  is  for  Art's  sake  while  Occupation  is  mediate 
that  Life  may  be,  for  Art  is  no  true  end  in  itself,  but 
serves  to  perfect  Humanity  ;  nor  is  the  distinction  in 
the  motive,  for  Art  may  be  as  self-centred  or  as  practical 
as  Occupation  :  but  the  distinction  is  that  Art  (or  any 
other  mode  of  pure  Culture)  is  careful  only  of  the  spirit 
and  is  careless  of  the  material,  while  Occupation  must 
consider  the  material,  the  substance.  Michael  Angelo 
may  be  architect  and  painter  and  sculptor,  for  he  is  an 
artist  ;  but  the  masons  must  build  St.  Peter's  of  stone 
of  right  quality  and  carefully  cut  to  pattern.  The  artist 
fixes  his  eye  on  the  design,  the  artisan  his  on  the  mate- 
rial. The  modern  architect-engineer  has  a  vision  of  the 
building  that  is  to  be  ;  but  within  the  limits  of  the  ma- 
terials chosen,  steel,  brick,  concrete,  stone,  terra-cotta, 
wood,  its  form  may  be  whatever  he  chooses.  Not  so  the 
workmen,  for  they  are  not  the  masters  but  the  slaves  of 
the  form.  The  poet  may  sing  his  thoughts  in  ode  or 
sonnet  or  ballad  or  lyric  ;  but  the  typesetter  must  pre- 
sent his  words  exactly  in  the  literal  types. 

The  world  of  Culture  is  a  world  of  free  men,  the 
world  of  Occupation  is  a  world  of  servants. 

The  first  moral  law  of  Occupation  is  that  it  must 
support  the  worker  and  all  his  natural  dependents.  Other- 
wise, it  is  no  true  occupation,  but  a  cheat  and  a  snare  and 


MORALITY  303 

a  torment,  which  betrays  its  victim  and  draws  society 
to  ruin.  Because  this  is  the  moral  law  and  for  no  other 
reason  whatsoever,  for  this  law  is  wholly  sufficient  and 
absolutely  imperative,  Society  in  its  organized  and  dom- 
inant form  of  the  State  undertakes  to  regulate  wages. 
Here  all  the  political  ecomony  of  laissez  faire,  with  its 
world  partly  God's,  partly  the  Devil's,  the  political  econ- 
omy not  of  true  wealth  but  of  property-wealth,  utterly 
breaks  down,  because  it  denies  sound  morals.  The 
laborer  must  live  by  his  work,  he  and  his  sick,  his  weak, 
his  aged,  his  little  ones.  Why?  Because  God  has  con- 
structed humanity  in  a  fashion  that  requires  care  of 
infants  that  civilization  may  endure,  care  of  the  young 
and  the  weak  that  man  may  be  tender-hearted,  care  of 
the  aged  that  he  may  be  just  and  grateful,  care  of  the 
strong  that  his  strength  be  not  used  for  his  own  destruc- 
tion. Work  without  adequate  wages  for  all  these  objects 
of  human  necessity  and  affection  is  work  that  destroys 
the  race,  is  work  against  the  will  of  God,  whose  end  is 
to  establish  and  to  perfect  humanity. 

"  Then  Christ  sought  out  an  artisan, 
A  low-browed,  stunted,  haggard  man, 
And  a  motherless  girl,  whose  fingers  thin 
Pushed  from  her  faintly  want  and  sin. 

"  These  set  He  in  the  midst  of  them, 
And  as  they  drew  back  their  garment-hem, 
For  fear  of  defilement,  '  Lo,  here,'  said  He, 

'  The  images  ye  have  made  of  Me.'  "  * 

What  are  we  going  to  do  about  it  ?  First,  recognize  it, 
diagnose  it.  There  is  no  cure  until  the  disease  is  known. 
This  is  a  disease  of  civilization.  What  has  education 
to  do  with  this  ?  Who  does  not  understand  the  proper 
relation  of  education  to  civilization,  does  not  yet  under- 

1  Lowell,  A  Parable. 


304  THE  EVIDENCES   OF  EDUCATION 

stand  what  education  in  America  is  and  what  we   as 
Americans  have  undertaken. 

A  second  moral  law  of  Occupation  is  that  it  should 
include  all  who  are  capable  of  its  labor  without  injury 
to  themselves,  but  not  capable  of  rendering  any  higher 
service  to  society.  Every  one  with  the  power  to  do  im- 
mediately useful  work  should  be  required  to  do  it,  unless 
he  is  actually  doing  or  is  being  fitted  to  do  work  that  is 
or  will  be  more  useful  work  than  Occupation  affords.  The 
leisure  class  must  be  composed  exclusively  of  persons 
who  as  exponents  of  Culture  are  more  useful  to  human- 
ity than  they  would  be  as  workers  by  Occupation.  The 
working  classes  must  be  composed  exclusively  of  those 
well  able  to  work  and  not  able  to  do  anything  better. 

The  corollary  of  this  moral  law  is  that  no  persons  phys- 
ically or  psychically  unable  to  work  without  detriment  to 
themselves  should  work.  The  spectacle  of  pregnant  and 
nursing  mothers,  of  consumptives  and  other  invalids,  of  half- 
grown  girls  and  boys,  even  of  baby  children,  at  work  in  mines 
or  mills  or  factories  or  stores  is  an  offense  against  conscience 
as  well  as  against  common  sense.1  It  may  be  "  Business  " ; 
but  so  may  war  and  pestilence,  crime,  graft,  and  vice  be 
"  Business."  That  reconstruction  of  society,  that  "industrial 
revolution," 2  which  has  borne  the  fruits  of  disintegrated 
home  and  family,  government  for  the  merchant,  religion  and 
culture  for  persons  of  leisure  and  wealth,  education  for  prac- 
tical life,  has  itself  been  brought  to  bar  for  judgment  and 
sentence.  It  has  filled  the  world  with  goods,  but  for  whom  ? 

i  " '  True,'  say  the  children, '  it  may  happen 

That  we  die  before  our  time : 
Little  Alice  died  last  year  ;  her  grave  is  shapen 

Like  a  snowball  in  the  rime. 
We  looked  into  the  pit  prepared  to  take  her  : 

Was  no  room  for  any  work  in  the  close  clay : 
From  the  sleep  wherein  she  lieth  none  will  wake  her, 
Crying,  "  Get  up,  little  Alice  !  it  is  day." '  " 

Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning,   The  Cry  of  the  Children. 
3  Toynbee,   The  Industrial  Revolution  ;  Ruskin,  Fors  Clavigera. 


MORALITY  305 

The  year  1660  saw  the  end  of  feudalism,  the  year  1776  saw 
the  rise  of  republicanism  ;  but  by  1830  this  republicanism, 
which  was  in  substance  a  democracy,  with  an  aristocratic 
overtone,  a  representative  democracy,  began  to  be  subverted 
by  a  new  feudalism  more  subtle,  less  responsible  than  the 
old.  Therefore,  we  have  a  democracy  with  a  plutocratic  over- 
tone and  a  demagogic  undertone :  and  what  is  that  sad 
music  as  of  breakers  so  far  away  ?  Is  the  wind  rising  ?  Is 
there  thundering  in  -the  air  ?  Is  the  good  ship  driving  into 
storm  ? 

A  second  corollary  of  this  law  is  that  none  should  work 
overtime,  beyond  his  strength,  so  long  as  to  exclude  the 
possibility  of  living  the  present  life  of  civilized  society.  Even 
the  workingman  is  clearly  entitled  to  some  leisure.  It  may  be 
true  that  he  cannot  for  a  year  or  for  five  years  at  a  stretch 
produce  as  much  when  working  eight  or  six  hours  a  day  as 
he  could  when  working  twelve  or  fourteen  hours  a  day.  It 
may  be  inconvenient  for  commercial  and  industrial  enterprises 
to  give  every  worker  a  day  and  a  half  in  every  seven  for  rest 
and  recreation.  It  may  be  true  that  the  man  who  works  eight 
hours  a  day  and  five  days  in  the  week  will  spend  much  of  his 
time  and  of  his  moneyin  the  "  saloon,"  that  bugbear  of  philan- 
thropic business  men,  who  do  "  not  believe  in  the  eight-hour 
day  "  and  in  the  Saturday  half-holiday.1 

A  third  moral  law  of  Occupation  is  that  its  product 
shall  never  be  harmful  to  humanity.  This  is  an  applica- 
tion of  that  fundamental  law  of  righteousness,  —  to  do 
nothing  injurious  to  one's  self  or  to  others.  Law-honesty 
may  not  run  pari  passu  with  real  honesty ;  but  to  adul- 
terate food  is  none  the  less  vicious.  Fornication  may  be 
practiced  without  prejudice  among  certain  classes,  and 
is  forgivable  in  the  notion  of  certain  churches ;  but  as 
a  mode  of  livelihood  or  of  amusement,  it  is  as  vicious 

1  In  the  reaction  against  what  I  know  of  too  much  work,  I  will  not  find 
fault  with  the  middle-aged  workingman  who  visits  the  saloon  in  the  even- 
ing, or  even  the  young  man  or  woman  who  goes  to  the  "  cheap  theatre  " 
or  to  the  music-  or  dance-hall.  Cf.  Patten,  New  Basis  of  Civilization, 
chapter  vii. 


3o6  THE    EVIDENCES  OF  EDUCATION 

to-day  as  it  was  when  God  wiped  out  whole  peoples  that 
practiced  it. 

This  moral  law  of  Occupation  affords  a  simple  yet 
entirely  convincing  test  of  "  what  one  has  a  right  to  do 
for  money."  Applied,  it  would  revolutionize  the  prac- 
tices of  the  ministry,  the  law,  medicine,  education,  gov- 
ernment, manufacture,  commerce,  marriage,  and  indeed 
what  not  ?  Religious  hypocrites  for  hire,  legal  tricksters 
and  shysters,  medical  quacks,  uneducated  educators,  legis- 
lators on  behalf  of  "special  interests,"  makers  and  traders 
in  the  "just-as-good  "  and  "harmless  adulterants,"  gamb- 
ling of  whatever  kind,  marriages  for  money  or  for  sup- 
port, and  everything  else  that  tends  to  debase  mankind, 
would  disappear ;  therefore,  this  cannot  yet  be,  for  the 
end  apparently  is  not  yet  in  view. 

A  fourth  moral  law  of  Occupation  is  to  improve  both 
the  art  itself  and  the  artisan.  The  machine  that  conquers 
work  is  a  benefaction  to  mankind. 

A  corollary  of  this  law  is  almost  as  important  as  the  law 
itself.  Wanting  a  universal  organization,  Occupation,  both  as 
Employer  and  as  Employed,  has  appealed  often  to  Government 
for  relief  when  machinery  has  displaced  laborers  and  upon 
many  other  occasions.  Occupation  must  organize  in  order 
to  set  its  artisans  and  other  workers  right  in  the  world  as  con- 
ditions change.1 

For  the  worker  in  Occupation,  there  is  the  law  to  deal 
honestly  with  one's  self  and  with  the  world.  The  product 
and  the  service  for  one's  own  sake  and  for  the  sake  of 
humanity  must  be  the  best  of  which  one  is  capable  under 
the  circumstances.  This,  too,  is  revolution.  If  every 
workman  were  intelligent  and  honest  and  as  efficient  as 
Nature  and  School  have  permitted,  Death  would  harvest 
few  before  they  had  reached  "man's  allotted  span," 
whatever  that  is. 

j  *  Webb,  Industrial  Democracy. 


MORALITY  307 

For  the  Professions,  which  are  higher  than  the  Occupations 
and  founded  on  them,  which  are,  indeed,  useful  modes  of 
Culture  rather  than  distinct  modes  of  human  activity,  though 
they  are  modes  of  applying  special  knowledge  in  the  service 
of  humanity,  there  is  the  distinct  moral  law  that  the  professor 
should  serve  all  the  needy  irrespective  of  compensation, 
honorarium,  or  other  reward. 

Business  has  many  meanings.  In  its  narrowest  sense,  ac- 
cording to  Webster,  it  means  "traffic,"  "buying  and  selling," 
"  financial  dealings."  I  use  it  in  the  slightly  broader  sense  of 
directing  occupations,  exchanging  goods,  employing  services 
for  econo'mic  ends.  Among  business  men,  I  include  employ- 
ing manufacturers,  merchants,  bankers,  brokers,  contractors, 
agents,  overseers,  transportation  managers,  and  others  simi- 
larly engaged. 

In  the  year  1776,  nine  tenths  of  Americans  were 
farmers.1  The  number  of  business  men  was  very  small. 
Even  of  these,  most  were  partly  farmers  and  mechanics. 
There  were  some  business  men  in  England,  but  its  repu- 
tation as  "a  nation  of  traders  and  shopkeepers  "  was  not 
yet  established.  A  study  of  the  census  of  1900  for  the 
United  States  fails  to  reveal  what  we  desire  to  know. 
There  were  merchants  and  dealers  (wholesale),  male 
42,o32,female  261 ;  (retail), male  756,802, female  34,084 ; 
bankers  and  brokers,  male  72,984,  female  293  ;  officials 
of  banks  and  companies,  male  72,801,  female  1271.  But 
we  are  at  a  loss  to  discover  how  many  employing  farmers 
there  were  ;  how  many  of  the  foregoing  merchants  were 
their  own  bookkeepers  and  salesmen ;  how  many  con- 
tractors there  were  in  the  building  trades ;  how  many 
employing  manufacturers;  in  short,  how  many  men  and 
women  in  "gainful  occupations"  were  securing  their 
gains  from  products  of  their  own  hands,  and  how  many 
by  trading  in  the  products  of  others.  It  may  be  Utopian 
to  expect  a  census  that  will  adopt  philosophical  or  even 

1  Schouler,  Americans  0/1776. 


308  THE   EVIDENCES  OF  EDUCATION 

economic  distinctions,  and  cease  to  call  both  the  man 
who  lays  brick  and  stone  and  the  man  who  employs  such 
brick- and  stone-layers  "masons."  The  man  who  cuts 
diamonds  and  the  man  who  buys  and  sells  cut  diamonds 
view  life  from  different  points.  He  who  farms  twenty 
acres  and  he  who  farms  twenty  thousand  differ  as  the 
laborer  in  an  industry  and  the  manager  of  a  business 
must  inevitably  differ.  Their  differences  are  many.  The 
important  difference  for  this  discussion  is  that  the  pri- 
mary interest  of  the  man  of  art,  whether  fine  or  indus- 
trial, is  in  the  work  itself,  the  product,  the  service,  while 
the  primary  interest  of  the  business  man  is  in  what  he  or 
his  employers  or  his  stockholders  will  get  out  of  it,  in 
the  profits,  in  the  results  to  property. 

In  1893,  at  Interlaken,  in  a  little  wood-carving  shop,  I  saw 
a  little  carven  bear.  The  price  was  five  francs.  I  offered 
four.  After  some  parley,  the  carver  said,  "  Oh,  well,  I  can 
make  another,"  and  sold  the  art-treasure.  He  was  an  artist. 
In  that  same  year  at  Pisa,  in  a  store,  I  saw  small  replicas 
of  the  Leaning  Tower  at  four  lire  each.  I  offered  seven  lire  for 
two.  "  No,  signore,"  said  the  proprietor,  "  the  price  of  two 
towers  is  ten  lire."  "  Why?  "  I  asked.  "  If  you  can  buy  two, 
you  must  be  rich,"  answered  the  business  man. 

The  argument  is  not  that  the  small  farmer  may  not  be  also 
a  good  business  man.  He  may  be  also  a  good  politician.  It 
is  that,  as  compared  with  the  "bonanza  farmer,"  he  is  not 
primarily  a  farmer  for  the  profits  of  "  the  farming  business." 

It  is  in  fact  easy  to  transform  any  profession  or  art  or  trade 
(occupation)  into  a  business ;  and  to  do  so  is  one  of  the 
temptations  that  beset  mankind.  The  physician  who  betrays 
medicine  from  the  art  of  healing  into  the  business  of  get- 
ting money  from  incurably  or  disgracefully  sick  persons,  the 
woman  who  marries  for  money,  the  author  who  writes  books 
to  sell,  and  others  like  them,  pervert  art  from  its  purposes 
and  strike  at  the  heart  of  civil  society. 

The  characteristic  purpose  of  Business,  as  defined  and 


MORALITY  309 

used  in  this  text,  is  without  labor  or  value  to  make  some- 
thing into  more,  which  is  in  reality  to  get  something  for 
nothing.  Of  Business,  used  in  this  sense,  some  typical 
operations  are  these :  to  buy  at  a  price  and  "  to  hold  for 
a  rise,"  then  by  selling  "to  make  a  profit;"  to  force 
owners  to  make  sales  to  their  disadvantage ;  to  mono- 
polize or  "  corner  "  properties  so  as  to  force  purchasers  to 
buy  "at  artificial  prices; "  to  defraud  the  general  public, 
that  is,  one's  fellow  men,  by  bribing  or  bulldozing  their 
representatives  in  government  or  by  betraying  the  public 
through  making  its  own  heads,  employers,  or  attorneys 
the  political  representatives;  to  muzzle  the  press;  in  its 
own  interest,  to  publish  statements  not  true  or  to  sup- 
press true  statements ;  to  enforce  contracts  to  their  limit 
when  favorable,  and  to  scant  them  to  the  limit  when 
unfavorable.  "The  stock  market  is  pure  business,  and 
no  sentiment,"  is  a  common  saying. 

It  is  Business  that  has  given  basis  to  the  philosophy  of 
Nietzsche.  Mankind  may  be  divided  into  two  kinds  :  masters 
and  servants.  The  world  exists  for  the  profit  of  the  masters. 
To  the  consistent  exponent  of  Business  the  end  of  life  is  gain. 
Business  is  not  too  serious  in  its  view  of  life,  but  too  intent 
in  its  purpose  to  say,  "  Eat,  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die." 
But  it  does  say,  and  act  accordingly,  "  I  will  tear  down  my 
barns  and  build  greater."  Given  free  rein,  Business  would 
wreck  mankind  immediately,  for  it  would  destroy  every  form 
of  Society. 

Business  must  not  be  confused  with  transportation  of 
goods.  This  is  a  service  that  actually  adds  value  to  the  goods. 
The  service  requires  labor  and  employs  capital  often  at  many 
points.  Wholesalers  and  retailers  (the  "  middlemen  "  between 
producers  and  consumers)  must  move  the  goods  from  mine, 
mill,  warehouse,  store,  to  the  place  of  consumption. 

The  artificiality  of  business  becomes  apparent  when  the 
canvassing  agent  is  considered.  Clearly  he  adds  nothing 
to  the  value  of  the  goods,  though  he  must  be  paid  out  of  the 
price. 


3io  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   EDUCATION 

War  is  without  morals.  What  are  the  morals  of  Busi- 
ness as  defined  here?  War  is  a  relation,  an  anti-relation, 
a  struggle  between  assailant  and  assaulted.  Business  is 
a  struggle  between  seller  and  buyer.  The  "ethics"  of 
selling  involve  getting  the  highest  possible  price  for  the 
article ;  of  buying,  getting  the  article  at  the  lowest  pos- 
sible price.  To  be  sure,  when  one  expects  to  go  on  sell- 
ing the  same  kind  of  article  for  years  to  come,  it  "pays " 
to  be  "  honest,"  that  is,  to  represent  the  goods  as  they 
are.  But  this  is  the  "honesty"  of  "policy,"  not  of 
morality. 

There  are  many  evidences  that  Business  is  a  Warfare 
tempered  by  truces  :  only  a  few  of  these  evidences  may 
be  outlined.  To  prevent  competition  from  running  into 
cut-throat  anarchy,  rival  sellers  of  similar  goods  form 
pools  or  consolidate  into  syndicates,  corporations,  or 
"trusts,"  while  rival  sellers  of  labor  form  unions  and 
federations.  "Ethics"  require  that  the  merchants  shall 
keep  honor  with  one  another  unless  a  very  great  profit  is 
certain  to  follow  withdrawal  from  the  agreement,  and 
that  the  laborers  shall  stick  together  and  not  "  scab  "  in 
time  of  trouble.  The  same  "ethics"  permit  strikes,  boy- 
cotts, when  laborers  are  dissatisfied,  and  lockouts  when 
the  employers  are  dissatisfied.  It  is  conventional  "ethics" 
to  bribe  an  opponent  when  bribery  is  cheaper  than  mak- 
ing war  upon  him. 

There  are,  no  doubt,  tens  of  thousands  of  men  who 
wish  that  Business  could  become  moral,  even  religious 
and  philanthropic,  in  its  character.  And  there  are  also 
many  instances  when  Business  actually  serves  the  inter- 
ests of  morality  and  even  of  chanty.  But  consider  two  of 
the  fundamental  tenets  of  morality,  —  to  tell  the  truth 
and  to  keep  one's  promises,  —  and  imagine  the  effect 
upon  Business  of  obeying  these  principles  in  letter  and 
in  spirit!  What  becomes  of  the  doctrine  of  a  "fair 
profit "  ?  Does  it  include  anything  more  than  fair  wages 


MORALITY  311 

for  the  service  rendered  and  repayment  of  expenses 
actually  incurred  ?  On  this  basis  would  any  man  "  earn  " 
a  million  dollars  by  a  deal  ?  What  becomes  of  the  law- 
suits for  broken  contracts  that  crowd  the  calendars  of 
the  courts  ?  Do  not  the  records  of  these  courts  bear 
witness  to  the  fact  that  they  are  the  umpires,  referees, 
and  judges  in  a  warfare  regulated  but  not  suppressed 
by  civilized  society?  Is  not  the  lawyer  a  champion 
for  an  otherwise  hapless  wight  in  a  jousting  match  or 
a  tournament  ?  The  very  penalty  for  non-performance, 
so  frequently  set  forth  in  contract,  bears  witness  to 
the  fact  that  in  Business  we  expect  promises  to  be 
broken. 

The  man  who  tells  the  truth  in  Business,  who  gives 
full  value  (literally  so)  for  value  received,  and  who  keeps 
his  promises,  —  who,  in  other  words,  deals  with  others 
as  he  would  prefer  them  to  deal  with  him,  —  has  re- 
nounced Business.  Such  a  man  does  not  consider  what 
he  can  get  and  then  proceed  to  get  all  that  he  can  for  a 
product  or  a  service,  but  considers  only  what  the  product 
or  service  has  actually  cost  him  in  goods  and  time;  in 
short  he  is  working  for  a  livelihood,  and  not  for  a  fortune. 
This  is  not  Business  as  here  defined.  This  man  must  be 
an  artist,  a  professor,  a  servant,  an  artisan,  a  mechanic, 
or  some  other  kind  of  person  who  lives  to  do  good 
work  and  who  works  to  .live  ;  but  he  is  no  "business 
man."  The  aim  of  the  business  man  is  to  get  more  of 
the  wealth  of  "  the  other  fellow  "  than  he  gives  in  return  : 
he  adds  to  his  own  property  if  he  can,  and  he  does  not 
care  whether  or  not  he  adds  to  the  sum  of  the  world's 
wealth  or  happiness.1  His  own  life  is  not  an  art  in  its 
aims  or  in  its  acts  or  in  itself ;  but  it  is  a  means  to  get 
goods,  to  get  ever  more  and  more  property. 

There  are  many  other  relations  than  those  of  the  for- 
mal social  institutions  and  of  the  social  struggles.  These 

1  Ruskin. 


3i2  THE    EVIDENCES    OF  EDUCATION 

other  relations  have  never  been  classified,  but  are  miscel- 
laneous. We  may  combine  them  in  the  term  General 
Society,  which  has  clear  and  explicit  moral  principles, 
needing  no  exposition. 

Social  morality  requires  one  to  tell  the  truth  unless 
that  hurts,  and  even  when  it  hurts,  provided  the  case  re- 
quires it, — that  is,  when  the  truth  will  do  more  good  than 
harm.  It  requires  keeping  one's  promises  and  appoint- 
ments unless  released.  It  requires  the  consideration  for 
others,  exemplified  by  such  virtues  as  punctuality,  polite- 
ness, and  gentleness.  It  requires,  therefore,  decency  of 
attire,  courtesy  by  the  strong  to  the  weak,  promising  no 
more  than  one  can  perform,  and  raising  no  false  expecta- 
tions. It  requires  gratitude,  resistance  to  evils  suffered 
by  or  threatened  against  the  weak,  magnanimity  to  en- 
emies, indifference  to  insults,  to  false  accusations,  and  to 
backbitings,  and  a  desire  to  deal  justly,  mercifully,  chari- 
tably, with  all  men,  good  and  bad.  It  requires  full  per- 
formance of  every  obligation  in  Church  and  State  and 
in  every  other  social  institution. 

That  peculiar  community  known  as  Society  and  familiar  in 
every  part  of  the  world  does  not  manifest  all  these  moral 
principles.  Whether  in  China  or  in  Boston,  in  Vienna  or  in 
St.  Louis,  Society  worships  success,  and  after  a  generation 
or  two  ignores  the  methods.  It  has  one  additional  require- 
ment, grace  —  or  at  least  graciousness.  To  be  successful  and 
to  have  manners  —  such  as  affability,  cordiality,  bodily  grace, 
and  acquaintance  with  "  the  world  "  —  is  to  have  the  keys  to 
this  Society.  Though  it  knows  thoroughly  and  appreciatively 
nothing,  —  neither  Art  nor  Music,  neither  Drama  nor  Philo- 
sophy, not  even  War  or  Business,  —  Society  is  an  aesthetic 
world-by-itself,  not  lightly  to  be  regarded  by  actors  in,  or  by 
students  of,  the  various  real  worlds  of  men. 

How  shall  education  induct  the  youth  into  such  a  great 
and  complex  body  of  morals  as  this  discussion  suggests  ? 


MORALITY  313 

It  has  not  yet  seriously  attempted  the  task.  Only  one  so 
informed  as  to  society  may  safely  be  trusted  to  take  his 
conscience  as  his  king.1 

1  "  A  creed  is  a  rod, 

And  a  crown  is  of  night : 

But  this  thing  is  God  :  — 

To  be  man  with  thy  might,  — 

To  grow  straight  in  the  strength  of  thy  spirit, 

And  live  out  thy  life  as  the  light." 

Swinburne,  "  Hertha,"  Songs  before  Sunrise. 


PART   FOUR 
THE   EVIDENCES   OF   CULTURE 

The  sheer  purpose  to  see  things  as  they  are,  the  love  of  our 
neighbor,  the  impulses  to  action,  help,  and  beneficence,  the  desires 
for  removing  human  confusion  and  for  diminishing  human  misery, 
the  noble  aspiration  to  leave  the  world  better  and  happier  than  we 
found  it,  the  recognition  that  to  be  salutary  and  stable  every  action 
and  every  institution  must  be  based  upon  reason  and  maintained 
by  method,  and  the  persistent  sense  of  duty  constitute  culture, 
which  seeks  to  make  the  best  that  is  known  and  thought  in  the 
world  current  everywhere.  Culture  has  one  great  passion,  the  pas- 
sion for  sweetness  and  light.  It  has  one  even  yet  greater,  the  pas- 
sion for  making  them  prevail.  —  MATTHEW  ARNOLD,  Culture  and 
Anarchy  (abridged). 


CHAPTER  XIV 

SCIENCE 

"  Forward  let  me  still  go  in  my  search  after  truth;    and  therein  let  me  die."  — 
BARNEVBLD,  Letter  to  a  Friend,  in  Life  by  Motley. 

The  greatest  intellectual  revolution  man  has  yet  seen  is  now  slowly  taking  place  by  the 
agency  of  science.  —  HUXLEY,  Zoology,  Lay  Sermons,  p.  118. 

The  course  of  Nature  is  the  art  of  God.  —  YOUNG,  Night  Thoughts,  ix. 

LITERACY  writes  and  reads  various  records  of  fact  and 
of  opinion.  Science  discovers  facts  and  exposes  false- 
hoods. In  respect  to  Nature,  literacy  expresses  her 
appearances  as  seen  casually,  often  as  seen  emotionally, 
by  man,  expresses  her  not  perfectly,  accumulates  in 
books  what  man  thinks  of  her.  The  burden  of  the 
thought  of  man  about  Nature,  real  enough  perhaps  for 
the  recorder,  but  to  all  others  secondary  and  not  pri- 
mary, grows  ever  heavier  upon  the  shoulders  of  man. 

Science  is  the  result  of  the  desire  of  man  to  know 
facts,  to  ascend  the  heights  of  Truth.  For  the  discovery 
of  Truth,  for  the  knowledge  of  Reality  as  far  as  Man  can 
know  it,  he  has  invented  a  method  called  Science.  This 
is  a  method  not  of  strictly  universal  applicability,  but  of 
far  more  general  applicability  than  at  first  appeared.  By 
it,  man  arranges  the  Facts  and  tests  such  hypotheses  as 
may  suggest  themselves  to  him  when  he  considers  the 
Facts.  The  hypotheses  remain  in  the  domain  of  Philo- 
sophy, which  is  a  system  of  generalizations  upon  general- 
izations, a  science  of  sciences,  and  belongs,  therefore,  in 
the  field  of  Literacy. 

The  scientific  method  has  constructed  a  multitude  of 
sciences,  —  to  mention  a  few,  botany,  biology,  zoology, 
anthropology,  physiology,  chemistry,  physics,  philology, 


3i8  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   CULTURE 

geology,  mineralogy,  meteorology;  and  is  trying  to 
construct  many  more,  —  sociology,  therapy,  hygiene, 
ethnology,  somatology,  psychology,  pathology,  economics. 
It  undertakes  to  invade  the  field  of  history  and  to  con- 
vert this  into  a  science,1  and  has  not  hesitated  to  discuss 
religion,  sometimes  even  challenging  the  reality  of  faith. 

When  we  divide  all  subjects  as  belonging  either  to  Nature 
or  to  Man,  and  therefore  as  belonging  either  to  Science  or  to 
Philosophy,  we  are  confronted  by  Mathematics,  which  are 
neither  inductive  and  scientific  in  their  nature  nor  human  in 
their  interests.  We  are  told  that,  though  essential  to  his 
success  in  the  struggle  with  Nature,  the  Mathematics  are 
sciences,  and  indifferent  to  the  temporal  concerns  of  man, 
because  they  are  the  logical,  dialectic,  intuitional,  and 
supreme  achievement  of  his  intellect.  For  the  Mathematics 
attain  certitude,  and  all  mathematical  knowledge  is  indubit- 
able. Therefore,  they  constitute  abstract  or  pure  Science, 
and  contribute  a  statistical  method  to  Science  and  a  mode 
of  quantitative  measurement  to  the  qualitative  criticisms  of 
Philosophy. 

The  scientific  method  begins  with  a  childlike  insistence 
upon  sight  of  the  thing  as  it  is,  and  disregard  of  every 
opinion  concerning  it.  Science  is  the  second  power  of  that 
activity  of  intelligence  which  functions  as  observation. 
Equally  truthful  and  impartial  with  the  observation  must 
be  the  record  of  the  fact  as  seen.  The  method  proceeds 
to  accumulate,  to  collate,  and  to  correlate  the  facts  and  to 
consider  them  in  their  relations.  It  is,  therefore,  a  method 
of  redemption  from  superstition  as  well  as  from  ignorance. 
The  scientific  method  is  truth  itself  functioning  as  desire 
and  purpose  to  learn  yet  more  truth.  As  such,  it  requires 
the  exercise  not  only  of  the  reason  —  that  highest  mode 
in  which  the  mind  of  man  acts,  and  which  in  its  insights 
and  intuitions  seems  to  act  independently  of  all  condi- 

1  Fling,  "  Historical  Synthesis,"  American  Historical  Review,  October, 
I903- 


SCIENCE  319 

tions  —  but  the  exercise  also  of  every  other  faculty.  The 
eradication  of  superstitions  must  proceed  part  passu  et 
aequo  gradu  with  the  acquisition  of  truths,  for  the  mind 
is  not  a  vacuum  but  a  plenum,  and  is  capable  only  of  cor- 
rection and  of  enlargement,  never  of  reduction.  In  itself, 
the  denunciation  of  error  can  produce  but  one  or  the 
other  of  two  results,  obstinate  accentuation  of  belief  in 
the  error  through  reaction  against  the  assault,  or  con- 
fusion of  ideas,  unsettlement  of  opinion,  and  hopeless- 
ness of  ever  knowing  truth,  which  is  worse. 

Nor  may  we  with  propriety  too  greatly  flatter  our- 
selves that  superstitions  are  not  in  course  of  developing 
or  of  strengthening  in  these  our  own  "modern"  times. 
A  superstition  may  indeed  be  an  "  ancient  good  "  made 
"uncouth  "by  Time  (to  use  the  phrasing  of  Lowell),  a  prin- 
ciple grown  anachronous,  a  corpse  once  living  but  at  last 
putrid  in  death.  For  we  must  not  only  find  new  truth  but 
reject  old  truth,  not  only  construct  but  destroy.  Tabula 
the  mind  never  was,  but  tabula  rasa  in  parts  it  must  be 
in  order  that  new  truth  may  be  written  upon  it.  Agnos- 
ticism is  the  transition  from  knowledge  to  yet  greater 
and  better  knowledge.  One  who  is  not  willing  to  doubt  is 
not  yet  ready  to  learn.  A  world  that  dares  not  challenge 
its  beliefs  thereby  certifies  that  it  is  superstitious,  for 
truth  is  militant.1 

Into  Nature,  its  past  and  its  present,  into  Man  as  the 
chief  product  and  example  of  Nature,  we  inquire  to-day 
most  anxiously  and  as  scientifically  as  we  know  how.  In 
this  inquiry,  we  shrink  from  nothing  whatsoever,  believ- 
ing that  truth  only  is  sacred,  believing  that  truth  is 
necessary  to  human  salvation,  believing  that  truth  can 
receive  no  wound  save  the  death-blow  of  fear  for  its 
safety.  "  Defend  truth  ?  "  said  Hegel.  "  Truth  will  de- 
fend thee." 

1  The  free  world  challenges  by  experiment  the  modern  reform.  Wundt, 
Human  and  Animal  Psychology,  p.  9. 


320  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   CULTURE 

A  multitude  of  problems  and  of  questions  suggest 
themselves  to  illustrate  the  range  of  this  scientific  inquiry 
into  Nature  and  human  nature  to  find  truth.  It  is  possi- 
ble to  transplant  the  ovaries  :  consider  what  questions  of 
heredity  and  of  morality  this  surgical  achievement  raises. 
Once  man  knew  nothing  of  race;  then  came  philology, 
measuring  his  kinship  by  language ;  now  comes  somato- 
logy,  measuring  his  kinship  by  the  ratio  of  length  of 
head  to  breadth.  Historical  geology  reconstructs  the 
earth  and  localizes  the  subanthropoid  upon  ancient  lit- 
torals of  the  sea.  The  brain  appears  to  be  a  medium  to 
register  vibrations  of  thought.  Mob  sympathy  becomes 
intelligible  ;  and  clairvoyance.  Said  Tolstoi :  "  The  power 
transcending  all  others,  which  has  influenced  individuals 
and  peoples  since  Time  began,  the  power  that  is  the 
convergence  of  the  invisible,  intangible  spiritual  forces  of 
all  humanity  is  social  opinion."  1  The  worm  grows  by 
visible  stages  into  man.  Electricity  and  steam  have  made 
the  ancient  aphorism  untrue,  "  Government  is  strongest 
at  its  centre,  weakest  upon  its  periphery; "  and  democracy 
becomes  as  practicable  for  a  continent  as  for  a  city. 
Radium  looks  through  many  forms  of  matter,  and  a  new 
philosophy  is  born.  In  the  spectrum,  the  universe  be- 
comes a  unity.  We  measure  fatigue  by  sphygnometry, 
and  reconstruct  education  by  anthropometry  and  by 
psychology.  By  the  quantitative  measurements  of  statis- 
tics, the  old  political  economy  fails  and  the  new  succeeds. 
Chemistry  analyzes  foods,  and  a  nation  changes  its  break- 
fasts.2 As  a  mountaineer  ascends  the  ice  cliff,  digging 
handhold  and  foothold  anxiously,  joyously,  each  hold 
slowly  won  but  secure,  so  man  ascends  the  heights  of 
perfectness,  relying  upon  ever  higher  and  higher  truth. 

For  truth,  man  turns  ever  more  and  more  to  Nature,  the 
visible  garment  of  God,  as  Goethe  said ;  and  God  is  no 

1  Tolstoi,  The  Kingdom  of  God,  chapter  x. 

2  Patten,  New  Basis  of  Civilization,  p.  20. 


SCIENCE  321 

hypocrite  displaying  one  thing  as  truth  in  Nature  and 
another  thing  as  truth  in  Men.  If  there  is  a  revealed 
Word,  that  Word  and  Nature  must,  of  course,  agree. 
There  can  be  no  reconciliation  between  scientific  truth 
and  religious  truth,  for  there  never  was  nor  ever  can  be 
any  disagreement.1  The  supposed  disagreements  were 
all  revelations  of  new  truth  and  exposures  of  old  error. 

Superstitions  were  respectable  in  ages  when  the 
structures  of  particular  societies  were  too  weak  safely  to 
permit  collisions  of  thought  ;  but  in  this  age  and  land, 
when  and  where  society  has  many  different  bonds,  there 
is  no  danger  but  only  good  in  freedom  of  thought,  the 
last,  not  the  first,  the  highest  freedom  of  man.  There- 
fore, he  turns  to  Nature  hopefully  and  continually. 

"  For  I  have  learned 
To  look  on  Nature,  not  as  in  the  hour 
Of  thoughtless  youth  ;  but  hearing  oftentimes 
The  still,  sad  music  of  humanity, 
Nor  harsh  nor  grating,  though  of  ample  power 
To  chasten  and  subdue.     And  I  have  felt 
A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thoughts  ;  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean,  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man  : 
A  motion  and  a  spirit,  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things.     Therefore,  am  I  still 
A  lover  of  the  meadows  and  the  woods, 
And  mountains  ;  and  of  all  that  we  behold 
From  this  green  earth  ;  of  all  the  mighty  world 
Of  eye  and  ear,  —  both  what  they  half  create 
And  what  perceive  ;  well  pleased  to  recognize 
In  Nature  and  the  language  of  the  sense, 
The  anchor  of  my  purest  thoughts,  the  nurse, 
The  guide,  the  guardian  of  my  heart,  and  soul 
Of  all  my  moral  being." 

1  White,    The  Warfare  between  Science  and  Theology,  vol.  i,  p.  viii. 


322  THE    EVIDENCES   OF   CULTURE 

"  To  them,  I  may  have  owed  another  gift, 

Of  aspect  more  sublime  ;  that  blessed  mood, 

In  which  the  burden  of  the  mystery, 

In  which  the  heavy  and  the  weary  weight 

Of  all  this  unintelligible  world, 

Is  lightened  :  —  that  serene  and  blessed  mood, 

In  which  the  affections  gently  lead  us  on,  — 

Until,  the  breath  of  this  corporeal  frame 

And  even  the  motion  of  our  human  blood 

Almost  suspended,  we  are  laid  asleep 

In  body,  and  become  a  living  soul, 

While  with  an  eye  made  quiet  by  the  power 

Of  harmony,  and  the  deep  power  of  joy, 

We  see  into  the  life  of  things."  l 

Man  as  the  product  of  Nature,  body  evolved,  soul, 
too,  evolved :  is  not  this  better,  after  all  is  said,  than  to 
suppose  that  each  man  is  a  stranger  here,  an  individual 
special  creation,  homeless  ?  And  does  this  preclude  his 
being  an  individual  creature,  proceeding,  as  Carlyle  so 
often  said,  "  from  Eternity  to  Eternity  "  ?  Is  there  not 
a  dignity  in  this  conception  of  a  cosmic  life,  of  a  life 
akin  to  all  other  creatures,  that  is  unattainable  by  any 
other  philosophy  ? 

"  Immense  have  been  the  preparations  for  me, 

Faithful  and  friendly  the  arms  that  have  helped  me, 

Cycles  ferried  my  cradle,  rowing  and  rowing  like  cheerful  boatmen, 

For  room  to  me  stars  kept  aside  in  their  own  rings, 

They  sent  influences  to  look  after  what  was  to  hold  me. 

Before  I  was  born  out  of  my  mother  generations  guided  me, 

My  embryo  has  never  been  torpid,  nothing  could  overlay  it. 

For  it  the  nebula  cohered  to  an  orb, 

The  long,  slow  strata  piled  to  rest  it  on, 

Vast  vegetables  gave  it  sustenance, 

Monstrous  sauroids  transported  it  in  their  mouths  and  deposited  it 

with  care  — 
All  forces  have  been  steadily  employed  to  complete  and  delight 

me, 
Now  on  this  spot  I  stand  with  my  robust  soul."  * 

1  Wordsworth,  Tintern  Abbey.  2  Whitman,  The  Song  of  Myself. 


SCIENCE  323 

Our  hope  is  that  the  scientific  study  of  Nature,  begun 
in  the  nineteenth  century,  may  prove  to  be  one  of  those 
factors  for  want  of  which  no  nation  has  ever  yet  solved 
the  problem  of  progress  without  end,  but  by  the  posses- 
sion of  which  this  nation  shall  so  progress.  This  scien- 
tific study  may  produce,  is,  we  believe,  actually  producing, 
results  of  value  in  human  economy.  Man,  said  Malthus, 
increases  in  geometric  ratio,  food  in  arithmetical ;  and, 
Ricardo  added,  by  the  law  of  diminishing  returns,  food- 
lands  certainly  reach  a  point  where  each  laborer  begins 
to  find  his  individual  return  growing  smaller.  Social 
peace,  therefore,  multiplies  man  and  thereby  brings  him 
to  starvation.  History  has  disproven  this  proposition; 
the  factor  ignored  was  scientific  discovery  accompanied 
by  technical  invention.1  We  have  learned  how  to  ex- 
haust nitrogen  from  the  air,  how  to  inoculate  the  soil 
with  the  microbes  of  fertility,  how  to  sow,  to  cultivate, 
and  to  reap  by  machinery,  how  to  produce  new  plants, 
and  how  to  work  many  other  marvels  ;  and  starvation  is 
more  remote  from  man  to-day  than  it  was  a  hundred 
years  ago,  when  the  "dismal  science"  first  declared  its 
prophecy. 

Natural  science  not  only  discovers  new  truth  and  adds 
to  the  stock  of  human  knowledge,  but  manifests  a  singu- 
lar power  in  the  education  and  elevation  of  its  students. 
It  liberates  talents,  quickens  curiosity,  arouses  devotion, 
inspires  activity,  and  enlarges  sympathy.  The  serious 
student  of  Nature  seems  to  be  quickened  by  cosmic 
force,  to  be  brought  into  the  presence  of  the  Maker. 
"Through  Nature  to  God"2  is  a  current  phrase  that 
conveys  a  truth  familiar  to  the  students  of  science,  tech- 
nical as  well  as  speculative,  laboratory  as  well  as  library. 
Telescope,  microscope,  telemicrophotoscope,  spectro- 
scope, reagent,  flux,  seismograph,  quadrant,  vernier,  flame, 

1  Ward,  Psychic  Factors  in  Civilization,  chapters  xxvii,  xxviii,  xxix. 
*  Fiske,  Through  ATature  to  God,  p.  193. 


324  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   CULTURE 

furnace  ;  botanist,  biologist,  histologist,  physicist,  chem- 
ist, physician  ;  tool,  medium,  worker :  all  these  reveal 
the  same  truth  as  do  Huxley,  Tyndall,  Spencer,  Darwin, 
Wallace,  Fiske,  that  the  whole,  from  ion  to  universe,  from 
star-dust  to  mind,  is  the  thought  of  God.  John,  the  re- 
ligious poet,  called  the  thought  (the  "logos")  a  person, 
"  without  whom  was  not  anything  made  that  was  made."  l 
And  Dante  2  saw  that  all  Nature  is  interwoven  with  the 
love  of  God. 

It  requires  but  very  little  philosophy  to  see  that  the  ques- 
tion whether  humanity  is  to  conquer  the  slow  cooling  of  the 
earth  and  to  last  forever,  or  is  to  have  an  end  in  the  flesh 
as  it  had  a  beginning,  has  no  relation  to  the  question  of  find- 
ing God  and  His  truth  in  Nature.  Humanity  is  no  entity,  is 
a  mere  abstraction  of  thought,  a  concept,  a  term.  Each  indi- 
vidual may  be  an  entity,  a  reality,  an  eternally  living  soul.  For 
the  individual,  this  particular  Nature,  the  surrounding  world, 
is  real :  each  man  in  the  course  of  his  life  may  find  this 
Nature  his  Maker  and  his  God.  An  impermanent  world,  in- 
habited by  a  mortal  humanity,  may  afford  a  sufficiency  of 
experience  for  this  period  of  time  for  each  permanent  and 
immortal  man.  The  heavens  may  be  rolled  up  as  a  scroll ; 
but  the  reader  may  never  forget  what  was  written  thereon. 
In  the  long  perspective  of  eternity,  evil  is  not  "  inchoate 
good,"  not  "good  in  the  making,"  not  even  a  sacrifice  that  good 
may  come,  a  temporary  scaffolding  for  the  permanent  struc- 
ture ;  but  both  good  and  evil  cease  to  be,  our  finite  judg- 
ments no  longer  hold,  and  we  are  reduced  to  a  proper  place 
as  creatures  who  cannot  judge.3  Thus  good  and  evil  become 
inexplicable,  their  incidents  mere  occasions  for  the  exercise 
of  our  finite  powers;  and  we  are  taught  "to  trust  in  the 
Lord  "  and  to  do  always  and  only  that  which  to  us  seems 
good.  One  cannot  look  upon  Nature  and  remain  at  peace, 
as  one  cannot  look  upon  men  and  human  society  and  remain 

1  John,  Gospel,  i,  6. 

1  Paradise,  xxxiii,  85. 

8  "  I  have  learned,"  said  Goethe,  "  quietly  to  revere  the  unfathomable." 


SCIENCE  325 

at  peace,  or  find  peace,  until  one  sees  in  all  external  processes 
the  manner  in  which  the  Almighty  works.  And  why  then 
shall  one  do  that  which  seems  good  ?  Only  because  life  seeks 
goodness  as  though  it  were  a  positive  magnetic  pole  ;  and  the 
good  promotes  life.  One  who  is  the  parent  of  ten  children, 
another  who  rears  two  well,  another  who  educates  fifty,  others 
who  by  their  products  or  services  feed,  clothe,  transport,  en- 
lighten, heal,  amuse,  or  in  any  other  of  familiar  uncounted 
ways,  direct  and  indirect,  benefit  hundreds,  perhaps  thousands 
of  humankind  :  these  all  do  good  because  they  promote  life. 
Therefore,  America  has  done  well  to  regard  economic  service 
as  useful  and  as  honorable  as  political  or  cultural.1 

Consider  the  varied  forms  of  life  in  a  single  foot  of 
woodland  sod.  Spears  and  roots  of  grass,  weed  and 
flower  seedlets,  worms,  insects,  seeds  and  eggs,  lives  and 
germs  of  lives  visible  and  invisible,  unnumbered  and  in- 
numerable !  The  great  tree  near  by  sends  tiny  rootlets 
into  it.  On  that  sod,  the  bird,  the  hare,  and  the  snake 
feed.  The  rain  waters  it,  the  air  dries  it ;  the  sun  warms, 
and  the  frost  chills  it.  Here  work  all  manner  of  physical 
forces,  —  capillary,  molecular,  atomic,  kinetic,  chemic. 
Underneath  it  subsists  the  planetary  mass  held  in  its 
course  by  sun  and  stars.  This  foot  of  sod,  teeming  with 
life,  has  all  the  interest  of  the  universe ;  and,  as  a  part 
of  the  universe,  it  has  a  dignity  beyond  estimate. 

Thus  Science,  beginning  with  facts  in  the  concrete, 
and  proceeding  through  relations  and  generalizations, 
that  involve  all  history,  natural  and  human,  arrives  at  the 
gateway  of  Philosophy. 

In  this  world  of  God,  we  may  not  honorably  fasten 
our  attention  and  affection  too  much  upon  the  various 
sciences  of  Nature  from  geology  to  ecology,  or  upon  the 
fields  of  investigation  as  determined  by  a  particular 
instrument,  whether  telescope  or  radium  tube,  or  upon 
any  particular  method,  historical,  laboratory,  comparative, 

1  Munsterberg,  The  Americans,  chapters  xi,  xil 


326  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   CULTURE 

inductive,  or  any  other  ;  Nature  is  more  than  Science, 
and  the  whole  is  far  more  worthy  of  our  interest  than 
any  part.  Moreover,  Nature  is  the  real  teacher ;  and,  when 
the  soul  is  responsive,  offers  lessons  of  incalculable  value. 

"And  Nature,  the  old  nurse,  took 
The  child  upon  her  knee, 
Saying :  '  Here  is  a  story-book 
Thy  Father  has  written  for  thee.' " 1 

Poets  and  naturalists  have  conspired  with  the  hearts 
of  men,  have  indeed  expressed  the  innermost  heart  of 
man,  by  expounding  and  by  exemplifying  the  lessons  of 
Nature.  In  the  education  of  the  individual  man,  there  is 
always  a  development  that  appears  to  be  a  revival  of  the 
ancient  familiarity  with  Nature.  But  the  appearance  is 
far  from  the  reality.  By  science,  by  literature,  by  the 
summer  camp  in  the  woods  or  upon  the  shore  of  ocean, 
we  do  not  go  "back  to  Nature."  Knowledge  builds  in 
things  visible  the  world  of  the  city  and  builds  in  the 
invisible  mind  the  world  of  Nature.  The  primitive  sav- 
age of  the  fields  and  woods  could  not  know  or  love 
Nature  :  the  fear  of  the  mysterious  events  and  processes 
of  the  external  world  consumed  him.  Winters,  storms, 
drouths,  nights,  wild  beasts,  reptiles,  insects,  diseases,  acci- 
dents, deaths,  births,  wars,  —  an  anarchy  of  circumstances 
not  understood  or  misunderstood,  —  filled  and  terrorized 
his  soul.2  All  the  glory  of  life  has  increased  as  man  has 
removed  from  his  starting-point  to  his  goal,  from  his 
origin  to  his  destiny  :  all  the  glory,  —  freedom,  beauty, 

1  Longfellow,  To  Agassiz. 

1  A  comparison  of  the  Nature-fiction — e.  g.  De  Foe's  Robinson 
Crusoe,  Weyman's  Story  of  Ab,  Ixmdon's  Before  Adam  —  with  the 
Nature-books  of  Thompson-Seton,  Long,  and  their  school,  and  with  the 
Nature-bibles,  —  Hall's  Adolescence,  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species  and  De- 
scent of  Man,  Drummond's  Ascent  of  Man,  —  reveals  vividly  the  desire 
of  man  to  uncover  the  depths  whence  he  came  and  the  road  by  which  he 
came. 


SCIENCE  327 

wisdom,  righteousness,  love  of  Nature.  To  the  man  who 
has  won  power  from  struggle,  patience  from  pain,  straight- 
forwardness from  difficulty,  each  virtue  from  evil  over- 
come, each  knowledge  from  darkness  lighted,  the  en- 
trance into  Nature  is  an  exceeding,  an  intoxicating  joy. 
Pictures  of  sky  and  hill,  of  river  and  plain,  of  marsh  and 
sea,  of  mountain  and  forest,  of  stars  and  sun,  of  night 
and  twilight,  of  snow  and  rain :  sounds  of  "  the  little 
green  leaves,"  *  songs  of  birds,  plashing  waves,  roaring 
tempests,  all  manner  of  voices  :  insights  and  lessons : 
for  these  he  goes  into  the  open  country  not  yet  noisome 
with  men,  and  of  these  he  composes  reverie  and  dream 
while  life  lasts.2  The  history  of  Nature  fascinates  him 
with  its  extinct  animals,  its  changed  seasons  and  climates, 
its  human  civilizations  now  vanished  away,  its  evolution 
out  of  the  primordial  disorder,  if  such  thing  ever  were. 
Cosmos  out  of  Chaos  ?  Never.  A  universe  out  of  no- 
thing? Never.  A  surprising  reconciliation  grows  in  his 
soul.  What  has  made  me  must  be  like  me  and  must 
make  all  things  like  me.  This  lesson  comes  late.  The 
great  throng  of  Nature-lovers  belong  to  our  own  times  ; 
the  names  of  Thoreau,  Jefferies,  Wordsworth,  Bryant, 
Whitman,  Tennyson,  Lanier,  lighten  our  age  with  the 
halo  of  glowing  reverence  for  the  works  of  God. 

"  Shall  any  gazer  see  with  mortal  eyes, 

Or  any  searcher  know  by  mortal  mind  ? 
Veil  after  veil  will  lift  —  but  there  must  be 
Veil  upon  veil  behind. 

"  Stars  sweep  and  question  not.    This  is  enough, 
That  life  and  death  and  joy  and  woe  abide ; 
And  cause  and  sequence  and  the  course  of  time 
And  Being's  ceaseless  tide." 3 

1  Lanier,  Sunrise.  *  Jefferies,  Story  of  My  Heart. 

3  Edwin  Arnold,  The  Light  of  Ana. 


CHAPTER  XV 

ART 

A  good  man  out  of  the  good  treasure  of  the  heart  bringeth  forth  good  things.  — Jesus, 
Matthew,  Gospel,  xii,  35.  Cf.  Luke,  Gospel,  yi,  45. 

In  our  heart  of  hearts,  we  are  well  assured  that  the  truth  that  has  made  us  free  will  in 
the  end  make  us  glad  also.  —  FELIX  ADLKR,  A  Religion  based  on  Ethics,  p.  34. 

Art  consists  in  this,  that  one  person  consciously,  by  certain  external  signs,  —  move- 
ments, lines,  colors)  sounds,  images,  words,  —  so  conveys  to  others  feelings  that  he  has 
experienced  that  they  are  affected  by  these  feelings  and  live  them  over  in  themselves.  — 
TOLSTOI,  What  aArtff.  74  (Johnston,  translator). 

THE  ideals  of  Education,  which  is  the  proper  concern  of 
the  School,  are  Intelligence,  Efficiency,  and  Morality,  — 
developed  processes  of  intellection,  conation,  and  emo- 
tion. The  ideals  of  Culture,  which  is  the  proper  concern 
of  the  University,  are  Science,  Art,  and  Philosophy,  — 
perfected  processes  of  intellection,  conation,  and  emo- 
tion. Thus  by  Education  and  by  Culture,  one  may  arrive 
at  self-understanding  and  world-understanding.  But  one 
may  achieve  this  end  only  by  the  long  way  of  the  mediate 
processes.  One  should  know,  do,  judge ;  out  of  the  know- 
ledge let  wisdom  arise ;  out  of  the  doing,  art ;  out  of  the 
moral  judging,  a  philosophy  of  conduct. 

Even  observation  and  literacy,  the  first  and  yet  least 
of  the  ideals  of  education,  can  never  be  perfectly  achieved. 
No  man  lives  who  can  see  all  the  truth  and  understand  the 
written  thought  of  every  other  man,  living  or  dead,  and 
express  every  thought  of  his  own.  He  who  studies  Sci- 
ence seriously  and  continuously  at  last  knows  how  futile 
all  his  study  is  ;  the  unknown  is  so  vast  as  to  be  essen- 
tially unknowable.  Yet  men  have  dreamed  of  becoming 
complete  scholars  and  synthetic  speculative  scientists. 
Neither  Von  Ranke  nor  Lord  Acton  by  long  lives  of 


ART  329 

prodigious  industry,  supported  by  extraordinary  talents, 
could  master  even  all  history,  not  to  say  all  other  fields 
of  human  literary  expression.1  Spencer  essayed  to  master 
the  meaning  and  details  of  all  the  sciences;  but  his  phil- 
osophy, despite  its  mechanical  and  rational  excellencies, 
fails  as  a  science  of  sciences.  True  philosophy  recognizes 
such  an  undertaking  as  literally  "  beyond  reason." 

Still  more  daring  would  he  be  who  in  this  modern  age 
should  undertake  the  mastery  of  all  the  arts,  for  though 
in  its  essence  Science  is  one,  the  arts  are  many.  Michael 
Angelo,  indeed,  was  painter,  sculptor,  architect,  poet,  and 
singer.2  We  meet  men  and  women  to-day  who  play  the 
piano  and  the  violin,  write  verse  and  prose,  sing,  and  paint. 
The  polyglot  who  is  eagerly  attacking  his  thirteenth  or 
thirtieth  language  has  his  counterpart  in  the  artist  who 
in  clay,  oil,  water-color,  bronze,  stone,  brick,  in  tone  of 
flute,  cornet,  viol,  organ,  by  essay,  poem,  narrative,  argu- 
ment, seeks  to  express  his  thought  in  mode  or  form  of 
beauty.  Such  universal  artistry  is  a  far  more  difficult 
enterprise  than  universal  literacy.  Artistry  involves 
concepts  of  beauty,  motor-efficiency,  and  that  vigorous 
integrity  of  soul  which  we  call  conscience.  To  perceive 
beauty  and  to  image  it  in  the  mind,  to  desire  to  make  the 
image  real  in  the  world  and  to  reduce  hand  and  eye  and 
brain,  muscle,  nerve,  will  itself,  to  successful  obedience 
to  the  vision,  and  to  think,  to  feel,  and  to  perform 
everything  in  sweet  harmony 3  with  genuine  morality 
are  the  obligations,  the  life-long,  insistent  obligations 

1  The  curious  should  read  the  notes  to  Acton's  brief  essay,  The  Study 
of  History,  and  discover  how  vast  his  reading  was. 

2  Raphael,  dying  at  thirty-seven,  had  compassed  an  immense  range  and 
variety  of  subjects  and  technical  methods. 

3  As  a  comparatively  trivial  instance  of  perfect  artistry  notice  the  phrase 
of  Milton,  —  "the  quiet  and  still  air  of  delightful  studies."    (Reason  of 
Church  Government,  Introduction,  book  i.)    A  lesser  artist  would  have 
fallen  into  verse  and  have  written  "  still  and  quiet  air,"  but  Milton  saw  the 
true  climax  from  quiet  to  still. 


330  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   CULTURE 

of  the  artist.  Moreover,  to  each  particular  art  are  its 
peculiar  modes  and  forms  of  beauty  and  its  peculiar 
technical  requirements  of  the  human  body.  Few,  there- 
fore, may  rise  to  Art.  Day  after  day,  day  and  night,  year 
upon  year,  the  ideal  and  the  performance  consume  the 
soul.  The  world  is  not  merely  careless  of  the  artist, 
but  essentially  ignorant  of  him,  blind  to  him.1  The  mod- 
ern world  requires  every  man  to  make  a  living,  or  to 
show  cause  or  privilege  to  live  without  working  for  a 
living.  With  this,  the  world  rests.  The  world  (the  age, 
the  time),  this  world  of  the  present  passing  economic 
regime,  is  not  concerned  with  Art :  ours  is  no  time  of 
cathedral-building.  What  few  pageants  we  have  pass  and 
are  forgotten ;  our  world-expositions  are  confessedly 
ephemeral ;  our  operas,  our  picture-galleries,  our  tapes- 
tries, our  ceremonies  are  for  the  few.  Yet  Art  is  eternal, 
universal,  public.  And  Art  endures  and  conquers  in  the 
good  and  proper  fullness  of  time  that  shields,  sanctifies, 
and  saves  all  truth. 

Of  "the  masterless  man,"  "afflicted  with  the  magic  of 
the  necessary  words "  that  "  become  alive  and  walk  up 
and  down  in  the  hearts  of  all  hearers,"  Kipling  has  said 
that  "  there  is  no  room  for  pity,  for  mercy,  for  respect, 
for  fear,  or  even  for  loyalty  between  man  and  his  fellow 
man  when  the  record  of  the  tribe  comes  to  be  written." 
"  It  must  satisfy  alike  the  keenest  vanity  and  the  deep- 
est self-knowledge  of  the  present ;  it  must  satisfy  also 
the  most  shameless  curiosity  of  the  future."  "By  the 
light  of  his  words,  our  children  will  judge  us";  and  we 
all  desire  beyond  everything  else  "to  stand  well  with 
our  children."  2 

1  "  William  Dean  Howells  said  to  me, '  The  artist,  the  only  person  in  the 
world  who  is  in  the  right,  is  made  by  our  social  system  the  only  person 
who  is  in  the  wrong.' "  Du  Bois,  "  A  Student  of  Drawing,"  Quarterly 
Illustrator,  1894,  p.  183. 

1  Address,  Royal  Academy,  May  7,  1906,  London.  Report,  N.  Y.  Sun. 


ART  331 

The  man  who  intends  to  become  supreme  in  his  art  aims 
at  nothing  less  than  perfection,  knowing  that  this  alone 
can  never  be  surpassed,  and  desiring  it  partly  because  it 
is  unattainable.  Life,  health,  pleasure,  property,  family, 
become  to  him,  at  most,  but  as  means  to  his  end,  at 
worst,  as  nothing.  He  has  some  thing,  perhaps  many 
things,  to  express ;  and  in  getting  this  thing  out  of  him- 
self, in  a  perfect  mode  or  form,  he  comes  to  see  the 
real  world  as  a  spectacle,  the  ideal  world  as  real.  Then 
does  the  artist  often  commit  what  seem  to  the  common 
world  terrible  offenses ;  and  so  they  would  be  in  com- 
mon men.  He  has  (or  he  thinks  that  he  has)  a  message 
to  give,  a  thought  to  create  into  an  object,  an  emotion 
to  teach  for  the  social  harmony ;  and  because  of  the 
burden,  he  goes  roughshod  about  the  world,  or  shrinks 
into  solitude,  or  becomes  intoxicated  with  the  idea  and 
wanders  gently  about,  dissipating  time  and  attention  and 
energy,  until  in  the  great  appointed  hour,  the  whole, 
formed,  illumined,  vital,  is  ready  to  be  said  or  sung  or 
painted  or  built  in  the  open  world. 

Art  is  a  tyrant ;  the  artist  is  a  slave.  One  art  requires 
the  organic  training  of  every  limb,  of  eye  and  ear  and 
touch,  — the  art  of  music  upon  the  great  reed-organ  of 
orchestral  power  and  choral  beauty.  Art  is  a  taskmaster ; 
the  artist  is  a  workman  under  bonds.  He  who  would 
master  the  art  of  painting  must  begin  in  his  youth  to  por- 
tray the  appearance  of  things  and  to  project  upon  paper 
or  canvas  forms  of  beauty  evolved  in  imagination  or 
fancy.  The  price  of  sensitiveness  to  beauty  is  continual 
hearkening  with  obedience. 

There  are  many  arts,  general  and  special.  The  arts 
are  beyond  and  above  the  sciences  and  cannot  be  scien- 
tifically classified  and  ranked.  The  sciences  themselves 
weave  their  edges  together,  for  who  shall  say  where 
biology  ends  and  psychology  begins  ?  Shall  sociology, 
economics,  political  science,  ethics,  or  jurisprudence 


332  THE   EVIDENCES   OF  CULTURE 

answer  the  question,  To  whom  of  right  does  ground-rent 
belong  ? l  Similarly,  the  arts  may  coalesce.  Is  the  song- 
writer musician  or  poet  ?  Ruskin  has  explained  elo- 
quently the  fine  distinctions  between  outline,  light  and 
shade,  color,  form,  and  substance.  Potter  or  sculptor, 
athlete  or  acrobat,  physician  or  surgeon,  pianist  or  organ- 
ist, politician  or  statesman,  writer  or  orator,  novelist  or 
essayist,  poet  or  dramatist,  the  artist  may  die  not  know- 
ing to  which  art  he  would  owe  his  posthumous  fame. 

Art  finds  its  origin  in  love  of  the  beautiful,  goes  to 
work,  acquires  efficiency,  at  last  finds  expression.  Of 
any  particular  example  of  this  art,  the  most  that  the 
artist  can  say  is  that  it  expresses  his  ideal  well  enough 
for  him  not  to  desire  to  work  longer  upon  it.  He  knows 
that  no  work  of  art  can  ever  be  perfect. 

Art  never  originates  in  anything  else  than  in  a  passion 
to  express  completely  the  idea  at  work  in  the  soul ; 
therefore,  the  artistic  is  the  truthful  made  orderly,  peace- 
ful, and  general.  Art  can  never  be  evaluated  in  terms  of 
anything  else.  It  is  incommensurate  with  time,  with 
labor,  with  pain,  with  pleasure,  with  property,  with 
money.  Art  is  worth  everything  or  nothing.  A  work  of 
art  has  no  value  because  it  cost  this  or  that  in  education, 
labor,  materials,  self-denial,  time  to  produce.  It  has  no 
economic  value  even  in  relation  to  other  works  of  art, 
though  it  has  many  other  values,  historical,  cultural,  crit- 
ical, moral.  The  world  of  art  is  a  world  by  itself.  It  is 
the  supreme  objective  product  of  man  because  it  is  his 
essence.2 

The  artisan  is  the  man  who  has  not  risen  above  effi- 
ciency in  his  work.  This  may  be  due  to  various  causes  : 

1  Certain  Western  States  make  homesteads  exempt  from  debt.  None 
yet  grant  and  guarantee  homesteads  to  all.  It  is  no  more  right  to  bargain 
for  homestead  land  than  for  slaves.  Patten,  New  Basis  of  Civilization, 
p.  152.  This  proposition  to  place  homestead  land  extra  commercium  is 
discussed  at  length  in  Pollock,  The  Land  Laws,  chapter  vii. 

*  "  Art  is  man's  nature."   Boswell,  Life  of  Johnson. 


ART  .  333 

he  may  not  sufficiently  love  beauty,  he  may  work  for  the 
reward,  he  may  be  on  the  road  to  Art,  but  may  not  yet 
have  reached  its  first  gate,  which  is  self-effacement ;  he 
may  have  been  prevented  from  journeying  farther  and 
may  have  been  forced  to  remain  an  artisan. 

The  true  artist,  whether  he  be  poor  or  rich,  is  none  the 
less  a  resident  in  the  palace  of  life.  He  who  carves  wood 
well,  makes  it  tell  a  story,  may  earn  less  money  than  his 
brother  the  carpenter  ;  but  he  may  not  take  his  brother 
with  him  into  the  palace.  It  may,  indeed,  be  well  with 
all  the  workers  in  houses  and  barns,  in  fields  and  mines, 
in  shops  and  mills.  Every  genuine  work  that  sustains 
life  —  life  physical  or  psychical,  individual  or  social  — 
is  good.  Art  is  the  second  power  of  work.  It  issues  from 
work  of  sufficient  intelligence  and  devotion,  because  God 
has  so  made  man  that  such  work  delivers  his  deeper 
nature  from  its  imprisonment  in  circumstance.  To  him 
who  desires  to  become  an  artist,  the  command  is  simple  : 
Work  in  the  faith  that  the  end  crowns  all  genuine,  com- 
petent work.  Whether  the  work  be  genuine  depends 
upon  the  desire  and  the  devotion,  which  are,  we  believe, 
somewhat  within  the  control  of  the  workman ;  but 
whether  the  work  be  competent,  or  will  become  compe- 
tent, depends  upon  the  intellect,  which  is  with  the  Maker 
of  the  workman.1  If  the  work  be  not  competent,  if  it 
can  never  become  competent,  the  workman  does  not 
know  it,  for  the  self-criticism  that  tells  one  of  his  failure 
also  conditions  and  forwards  his  success.  The  man  with 
the  instinct  for  the  work  that  is  to  lead  him  to  Art,  "the 
capacity  for  taking  infinite  pains,"  knows  at  the  outset 
clearly  and  simply  that  he  must  acquire  the  method  of 
Art,  the  historical,  and  the  general,  if  possible,  the  uni- 
versal method.  He  obeys  this  knowledge  by  studying  the 

1  "  Intellect  is  not  a  power,  but  an  instrument  worked  by  forces  behind 
it.  Reason  is  an  eye  through  which  desires  look."  Spencer,  Social  Statics, 
1851,  p.  350. 


334  THE  EVIDENCES    OF   CULTURE 

methods  of  other  artists,  the  best  artists  known  to  him. 
He  realizes  fully  that  "  individuality  of  method  is  but 
the  effort  of  ignorance  to  imagine  what  has  not  been 
learned."  l  True  art  is  without  individuality,  the  work 
alone  exists  and  delights,  not  merely  because  the  artist 
was  self-forgetful  when  he  wrought  the  work,  but  also 
because  he  had  long  ago  discarded  his  own  individual 
notions  and  opinions,  seeking  only  and  always  the  best, 
the  most  general,  the  ideal. 

The  working  efficiency  that  is  the  material  of  artistic 
skill  may  express  itself  in  unremitting  daily  industry  or 
in  periods  of  excessive  effort  alternating  with  longer  or 
shorter  periods  of  exhaustion,  rest,  and  recuperation. 
But  it  can  never  be  developed  late  in  life.  When  devel- 
oped in  youth  in  certain  modes  and  expended  in  certain 
directions,  in  manhood  it  may  be  transformed  to  other 
modes  and  set  in  other  directions.  Like  electricity,  it 
may  drive  machinery,  produce  light  and  heat,  or  trans- 
mit messages ;  but  also  like  electricity  it  must  be  itself 
produced  or  induced.  Art  finds  its  origin,  therefore,  in 
the  release  of  the  primal  energy  of  the  soul.  Education 
must  effect  such  a  release,  and  must  effect  it  while 
muscles  and  nerves  and  brain-cells  are  in  process  of  form- 
ation, organization,  and  correlation. 

Americans  and  Englishmen  might  well  learn  of  the 
French,  the  Italians,  the  Germans,  the  Japanese,  the 
Chinese,  and  the  Hindoos  that  Art  lends  beauty  to  life.2 
Art  is  to  life  what  the  sky  is  to  the  earth.  This  truth 
has  a  very  practical  bearing.  The  joy  in  beauty  continues 
unceasingly  and  renews  itself  by  contemplation  of  the 
beautiful  object.  God  made  the  human  soul  upon  this 
fashion.  The  more  a  workman  seeks  to  find  beauty  in  his 
work,  to  make  every  product  an  art-product,  the  happier 

1  Fromentin,  Old  Masters  of  Belgium  and  Holland,  p.  177. 

2  "  The  environment  transforms  the  animal,  while  man  transforms  the 
environment."   Ward,  Psychic  Factors  in  Civilization,  p.  257. 


ART  335 

he  is,  for  he  is  helping  to  fill  the  world  with  beauty  and 
is  filling  his  own  memory  with  images  of  beauty.  The 
finis  of  art  would  be  a  world  made  wholly  beautiful. 

We  cannot  make  American  automobiles  so  good  as  the 
French,  for  one  clear  reason.  Our  mechanics  work  for 
wages,  our  engineers  work  for  salaries,  and  our  business 
men  work  for  profits.  The  machine  to  be  made  is  a  means  to  the 
end.  The  French  work  for  wages,  for  salaries,  and  for  profits 
that  they  may  go  on  making  better  and  better  machines. 
Each  nation  gets  what  it  desires,  —  we  Americans  the  wealth, 
the  French  the  delight  in  fine  machinery.  Neither  really 
"  competes  "  with  the  other.  Each  travels  a  different  road ; 
but  each  travels. 

To  our  Art  defectiveness,  we  are  blind,  and  therefore 
indifferent.  We  sometimes  mourn  that  this  man  or  that 
has  no  knowledge  of  history  or  of  literature.  Less  often 
we  charge  his  failure  in  life  to  inefficiency.  Once  in  a 
while,  we  speak  of  one  as  law-honest,  controlled  only  by 
conventional  morals,  having  no  genuine  appreciation  of 
general  and  essential  morals.  But  with  all  our  social  self- 
criticism  we  seem  to  agree  that  to  expect  any  one  not  a 
"professor"  to  know  anything  scientifically,  or  any  one 
not  an  "artist "  to  be  able  to  make  any  object  of  art,  or 
even  to  appreciate  the  object,  is  beyond  common  sense 
or  discernible  reason.  Nor  have  we  seriously  or  otherwise 
proposed  this  to  ourselves,  that  it  is  our  duty  to  society, 
to  mankind,  to  the  nation,  and  to  each  individual  man  to 
make  of  him,  if  we  and  he  together  can  achieve  this, 
a  man  of  scientific  knowledge,  or,  still  better,  of  'artistic 
power.  We  do  not  feel  the  beauty  or  sincerity  or  other 
value  of  what  art  we  see ;  we  do  not  feel  the  truth  or 
meaning  or  other  value  of  what  science  we  discern  ;  and 
having  no  feelings  for  the  realities,  we  can  have  no 
desires  for  their  presence  or  increase  except  in  so  far 
as  perhaps  we  have  inherited  from  nobler  ancestors  the 


336  THE    EVIDENCES   OF   CULTURE 

instincts  for  the  beautiful  or  for  the  simply  true.1  As 
for  women,  one  who  struggles  out  of  the  social  quick- 
sand and  reaches  the  solid  ground  of  science  or  the 
free  water  of  Art  must  do  so  by  her  own  strength,  aided 
perhaps  by  some  sister  or  brother  scientist  or  artist,  but 
derided  and  impeded  by  society. 

It  is  so  all  over  Europe?  It  has  been  so  in  all  ages  ? 
By  no  manner  of  means.  Hitherto  the  great  civilizations, 
as  far  as  their  institutions  have  permitted,  have  always 
rejoiced  fr>  help  the  ambitious  and  consecrated  man  or 
woman.  Western  Europe  still  rejoices  in  the  strength  and 
zeal  of  the  young.  We  present  a  curious  anomaly.  Our 
institutions  are  far  more  favorable  to  the  rise  of  youth  of 
talent  and  energy  ;  but,  save  in  isolated  communities,  we 
are  dead  to  the  glory  of  the  only  true  aristocracy,  that 
of  worth.  The  more  honor  and  the  more  gratitude,  there- 
fore, to  those  few  communities  and  individual  men 
that  have  forwarded  the  progress  of  youth  in  Science 
or  in  Art. 

However,  the  need  is  too  great  for  individual  or  even 
community  endeavor.  The  entire  force  of  public  and 
private  education  and  culture  ought  to  be  directed  toward 
producing  as  many  as  possible  true  scientists  and  artists, 
that  the  nation  may  be  wise  and  the  land  be  filled  with 
the  beauty  of  sincere  and  complete  truth.  Such  truth 
must  include  the  life  of  human  emotion  as  well  as  of 
pure  thought.  Life  as  a  whole  resembles  the  architec- 
tonic grandeur  of  the  musical  orchestra  or  the  architec- 
tonic complexity  of  the  theatrical  drama,  — architectonic 
because  it  includes  so  many  arts.  Pictures,  vistas,  pano- 
ramas are  swept  across  the  vision  of  the  soul ;  and  the 
soul  responds  with  sentiments,  emotions,  despairs,  and 

1  Spencer  was  substantially,  though  not  universally,  correct  when  he 
said  :  "  Desires  are  cravings  for  the  return  to  consciousness  of  real  feel- 
ings." Principles  of  Psychology,  pp.  126,  273.  We  have  never  experi- 
enced these  real  feelings  of  music,  of  poetry,  or  of  other  arts. 


ART  337 

ecstasies.  These  states  and  conditions  of  the  soul  Art 
crystallizes  in  a  melody,  a  symphony,  an  opera,  a  poem, 
a  drama,  a  painting,  a  sculpture,  a  story,  a  novel,  a  design, 
an  essay,  —  whatever  form  the  artist  who  conceives  the 
thought  afresh  finds  his  hand  or  voice  or  imagination 
ready  to  execute.  Therefore  truth  in  Art  is  the  thing  as 
the  artist  sees  it,  and  seeing  re-creates. 

The  worlds  of  Science,  Art,  and  Philosophy  are  all 
democracies.  No  man  can  say  that  it  is  greater  or  higher 
or  profounder  to  discover  a  truth  in  geology  than  in 
zoology,  in  economics  than  in  mathematics.  At  present 
a  particular  science  may  appear  to  be  a  cul  de  sac  ;  a  day 
later  there  may  open  out  from  it  a  wide  avenue  into  the 
universe.  Nor  may  any  one  safely  predict  when  or  where 
or  by  whom  the  new  way  shall  appear.  There  are,  how- 
ever, at  particular  times,  correlations,  inclusions,  exclu- 
sions, limits,  disputed  fields,  that  later  may  be  changed 
but  now  are  very  real.  Of  the  arts  also,  no  man  may 
safely  predict  what  developments  the  future  has  in  store. 

Art  is  democratic.  No  man  may  rightly  say  that  a 
thing  of  beauty  in  one  particular  art  is  more  beautiful 
than  a  thing  of  beauty  in  some  other  art.  A  poem  as  an 
art  product  does  not  transcend  a  cathedral  ;  or  an  opera, 
a  drama ;  or  a  statue,  a  painting.  One  may  indeed  be 
more  important  than  another  because  at  present  it  con- 
cerns more  persons  or  more  important  persons ;  but 
Giotto  who  built  the  tower  sits  in  Art  with  Longfellow 
who  wrote  the  sonnet :  — 

How  many  lives,  made  beautiful  and  sweet 
By  self-devotion  and  by  self-restraint, 
Whose  pleasure  is  to  run  without  complaint 

On  unknown  errands  of  the  Paraclete, 

Wanting  the  reverence  of  unshodden  feet, 
Fail  of  the  nimbus  which  the  artists  paint 
Around  the  shining  forehead  of  the  saint, 

And  are  in  their  completeness  incomplete  ! 


338  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   CULTURE 

In  the  old  Tuscan  town  stands  Giotto's  tower 
The  lily  of  Florence  blossoming  in  stone,  — 

A  vision,  a  delight,  and  a  desire,  — 
The  builder's  perfect  and  centennial  flower, 
That  in  the  night  of  ages  bloomed  alone, 
But  wanting  still  the  glory  of  the  spire. 

It  is  the  technique  in  such  art  as  this  that  conceals  the 
art. 

This  technique  includes  skill  and  judgment  in  these 
several  respects  :  The  master-artist  possesses  his  body 
in  every  part  that  is  concerned  with  his  art,  and  directs 
it  as  a  whole  and  in  each  part  concerned  ;  therefore,  he 
can  do  what  he  desires.  This  possession  and  this  power 
of  direction  he  secured  by  physical  effort  unremitted 
until  the  victory  was  won  and  his  body  was  put  under ; 
and  these  he  maintains  by  continued  effort.  He  has 
won  over  into  the  field  of  consciousness  his  emotions, 
passions,  and  desires,  rationalizing  them  only  in  part  but 
understanding  them  as  wholes.  He  knows  his  funda- 
mental, original,  primitive  self.  He  has  mastered  the 
mechanical  elements  that  concern  his  art,  and  all  its  tools 
and  instruments  and  recording  devices.  By  his  tech- 
nical art,  he  expresses  only  what  he  understands.  He  is, 
therefore,  substantially  in  his  creative  moods  the  master 
of  his  soul  as  he  is  at  all  times  master  of  his  body.  He 
has  gone  out  into  life,  has  observed  the  facts,  has  dis- 
covered and  to  a  degree  interpreted  the  events,  and  has 
taken  the  lessons  thereof  to  heart,  by  feeling  their  real- 
ity, their  nearness,  their  akinness  to  his  own  experi- 
ences. He  has  enlarged  his  personality  into  sociality  and 
thereby  absorbed  society  as  far  as  he  knows  it.1  He  has 
found  the  way  of  escape  out  of  his  own  introspectiveness 
into  the  objective  world,  can  feel  what  another  person 
might  feel,  achieves,  it  may  be,  various  other  personalities, 
and  has  forgotten  the  limitations  of  his  own  individuality. 

1  Norton,  "  The  Intellectual  Element  in  Music,"  Studies  in  Philosophy 
and  Psychology. 


ART  339 

He  knows  the  achievement  of  other  artists.  Lastly, 
he  has  now  the  mastery  of  the  essential  things  present 
in  consciousness  in  these  moods  and  holds  to  them, 
discarding  the  non-essentials.  Thus  physical  control, 
psychical  understanding,  social  truthfulness,  imagination 
that  bodies  forth  ideas  as  realities,  and  judgment  that 
selects  and  discards,  conspire  to  make  the  artist ;  but 
they  cannot  make  the  art-product. 

What  the  artist  of  any  kind  produces  will  fall  into  one 
of  two  classes :  art-products  of  the  first  class  represent- 
ing the  syntheses  of  long  reflective  periods,  maturing 
gradually  in  consecutive  creative  moods  alternating  with 
moods  of  reverie  and  criticism,  and  art-products  of  the 
second  class  representing  the  syntheses  of  sudden  creat- 
ive moods  that  are  apparently  accidental  and  uncaused. 
To  the  first  class  belong  the  architectonic  displays  char- 
acteristic of  Angelo,  Dante,  Milton,  Goethe,  Beethoven ; 
to  the  second,  the  sudden  gusts  of  passionate  art  in 
Demosthenes,  Byron,  Poe,  Heine.  All  the  greater  artists 
have  achieved  both  kinds  of  success,  —  Shakespeare, 
Verestchagin,  Wagner,  Tennyson ;  but  in  various  degrees. 
Can  such  power  be  taught  ?  No ;  but  if  present,  it  can 
be  inhibited,  combined,  saved,  directed,  utilized,  and 
disciplined ;  and  this  process  culminates  in  Art. 

The  triumphs  of  Art  are  higher  than  the  triumphs  of 
Science  as  such  for  several  reasons  :  Art  is  a  functioning 
of  Science,  a  kind  of  higher  applied  Science,  being  im- 
possible without  Science ;  moreover,  until  Science  finds 
a  sufficient  tool  in  some  appropriate  art-technic,  it  can- 
not accomplish  its  ends,  nor  does  it  convince  the  world 
until  it  has  found  some  form  or  mode  of  art-expression; 
and  Science  in  itself,  being  essentially  intellectual,  does 
not  stir  the  souls  of  men  as  does  the  least  of  the  arts  — 
for  every  art  is  essentially  affective  and  affectional.  Art 
is  magic,  is  miracle,  is  incomprehensible  and  incredible. 
We  do  not  know  it  or  believe  it  or  understand  it :  we 


340  THE   EVIDENCES  OF   CULTURE 

obey.  Art  masters  the  souls  of  the  sons  of  men  because  it 
has  first  mastered  the  soul  of  the  artist.  Art  is  surrender 
to  motives,  delight  in  absorption  in  ideals,  conviction  of 
values:  it  is  delivery  from  chaos  into  cosmos,  from  the 
fleeting  into  the  eternal,  from  the  particular  into  the 
universal.  We  love  Art  because  it  embodies  and  visions 
forth  the  love  that  the  artist  felt  in  it.  And  this  is  the 
final  test  of  pseudo-art,  wherein  it  fails ;  that  we  regret 
its  memory  and  resent  its  presence. 


CHAPTER   XVI 

PHILOSOPHY 

There  is  one  only  good,  that  is,  knowledge;  and  one  only  evil,  that  is,  ignorance.— 
DIOGENES  LAERTIUS,  Socrates,  xiv. 

Philosophy  is  completely  unified  knowledge.  —  SPENCER,  First  Principles,  part  2,  chap- 
ter i,  §  37. 

Whatsoever  things  are  true,  whatsoever  things  are  honest,  whatsoever  things  are  just, 
whatsoever  things  are  pure,  whatsoever  things  are  lovely,  whatsoever  things  are  of  good 
report,  if  there  be  any  virtue,  and  if  there  be  any  praise,  think  on  these  things.  —  PAUL, 
Epistle  to  Phil,  iv,  8. 

Thought  takes  man  out  of  servitude  into  freedom.  —  EMERSON,  "  Fate,"  Conduct  of 
Life. 

BY  observation,  one  may  acquire  facts.  By  listening 
and  by  reading,  one  may  receive  facts.  By  study,  one 
may  organize  facts  into  a  body  of  knowledge.  But  the 
result  of  all  the  observation,  reading,  investigation,  and 
consideration,  of  all  the  activity  of  the  senses,  the  literacy, 
the  diligence,  the  honest  inquiry,  the  science,  the  art, 
and  the  knowledge  of  years  of  life  may  yet  be  disap- 
pointing, even  disconcerting.  The  natural,  or  at  least 
the  logical,  culmination  of  Intelligence  is  Science ;  of 
Efficiency,  Art ;  of  Morality,  Philosophy.  Science  is  the 
second  power  of  Intelligence  ;  Art,  the  second  power  of 
Efficiency ;  Philosophy,  the  second  power  of  Morality. 
The  experience  that  in  thinking  functions  first  as  Intel- 
ligence by  longer  processes  of  the  undiscovered  essential 
spirit  may  function  later  as  Science,  whose  substance  is 
the  ideal ;  the  experience  that  in  willing  functions  first 
as  Efficiency  by  longer  processes  of  the  same  spirit  may 
function  later  as  Art,  whose  substance  is  the  motive ;  and 
the  experience  that  in  feeling  functions  first  as  Morality 
may  function  later  as  Philosophy,  whose  substance  is  the 


342  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   CULTURE 

intent.  The  mystery  and  miracle  lie  in  the  functioning, 
which  some  may  perform  but  others  may  not,  whose 
nature  and  essence  are  hidden  in  the  spirit  until  man 
knows  himself  even  as  he  is  known.  Culture  itself, 
rightly  considered,  is  but  a  higher,  a  sublimated  stage 
of  education.  And  the  well-educated  man  does  not  rest 
content  until  his  developed  powers  have  borne  the  fruits 
of  culture,  which  are  Science,  Art,  and  Philosophy. 
Education  may  be  completed  in  adolescence ;  but  culture, 
the  refining  of  powers,  the  manifesting  of  results,  the 
evidence  that  education  has  been  worth  while,  is  the 
occupation  of  manhood  and  the  solace  of  old  age. 

It  pleases  the  Creator  of  man  to  give  him  in  youth 
a  certain  capital,  greater  or  less,  a  certain  number  of 
talents.  Of  manhood,  God  requires  the  capital  to  be  put 
to  use.  In  old  age,  He  asks  an  accounting.1  It  is  well 
for  us  to  accept  the  fact,  to  rejoice  that  the  burden  of 
responsibility  does  not  grow  heavier  with  each  year 
of  life.  Neither  youth  nor  manhood  can  dispassionately 
take  toll  of  itself,  for  youth  is  full  of  hope  that  more 
power  may  yet  be  given,  and  manhood  is  busy  with  faith- 
ful discharging  of  its  trusts.  At  last,  however,  in  the 
normal  life,  not  cut  off  before  the  second  twilight,  there 
comes  old  age,  calmly;  and  its  coming  is  welcome.  Then 
man  looks  back  and  measures  the  track  from  dawn  till 
dark.  By  this  retrospect,  life  gathers  to  itself  complete- 
ness.2 

To  the  life-process,  by  which  the  soul  of  the  human 
being  comes  to  the  only  perfectness  possible  to  the  finite 
creature,  the  education-culture-process  is  closely  ana- 
logous. For  Philosophy,  like  old  age,  busies  itself  with 
retrospection  and  seeks  harmony  and  reconciliation.  And 
as,  in  old  age,  one  who  sees  what  he  has  done  that  he 
ought  not  to  have  done,  and  what  he  has  not  done  that 

1  Parable  of  the  talents.   Jesus,  Matthew,  Gospel,  xxv,  15-25. 
1  Shaler,  The  Individual,  chapter  x. 


PHILOSOPHY  343 

he  ought  to  have  done,  comforts  one's  self  with  sorrow 
for  errors  and  with  faith  that  the  great  temporal  world, 
which  one  is  about  to  leave,  will  not  miss  one,  so  the 
philosopher  who  knows  how  great  are  the  gaps  in  his 
knowledge,  how  prone  to  fallacies  all  his  opinions  are, 
how  self-deceiving  all  his  motives,  comforts  himself  with 
the  universal  outlook.  The  philosopher  —  whether  his 
life  be  mainly  good  or  evil  as  others  view  it,  whether  he 
be  Aristotle  or  Spinoza  or  Schopenhauer,  historian, 
primitive  ballad-singer,  ruler,  mechanic,  farmer,  man-in- 
the-street  —  seeks  to  order  his  knowledge  in  a  system 
wherein  the  principles  radiate  outward  from  a  central 
thesis  with  due  rank  of  superiority  and  subordination. 
He  knows  how  incomplete  the  system  is,  that  indeed  he 
can  never  complete  it ;  but  by  means  of  the  system, 
he  is  reconciled  to  life.  Men  differ  not  as  beings  with 
and  beings  without  Philosophy,  but  as  philosophers  of 
various  kinds,  extents,  and  qualities.  Ignorant  men  are 
not  less  but  rather  more  prone  to  philosophizing  than 
men  of  larger  knowledge.  They  are  quite  as  likely  to 
arrive  at  items  of  real  truth  as  are  any  other  men  (this 
is  true  empirically  and  also  logically,  for  were  it  not 
true,  then  life  would  be  both  a  deception  and  a  wrong, 
and  the  giver  of  life  entirely  evil) ;  but  they  cannot 
compass  as  great  a  round  of  truth.  Therefore,  their 
philosophical  contribution  to  their  fellow  men  is  less. 
Moreover,  there  is  but  little  likelihood  that  an  ignor- 
ant man  may  discover  any  new  truth,  make  any  original 
or  larger  synthesis,  or  bring  forth  anything  that  shall 
be  forever  afterward  indispensable  to  mankind.  And 
yet  in  times  past  unlearned  men  have  made  such  dis- 
coveries, for  the  human  soul  is  not  utterly  dependent 
upon  formal  circumstance  and  opportunity  for  knowledge 
of  the  truth.  Moses,  Paul,  and  Kant  asserted  the  original 
power  of  the  soul  to  know  the  truth.  It  may  be  that 
knowledge  of  truth  is  as  much  a  constituent  part  or  form 


344  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   CULTURE 

of  the  immaterial  soul  as  the  soul  is  a  constituent  part  or 
form  of  the  material  cells  by  which  heredity  flows  from 
parents  to  child,  in  generation  after  generation.  Cer- 
tainly the  power  to  recognize  truth  and  the  instinct  for 
it  are  part  and  parcel  of  our  common  humanity.1  Cer- 
tainly the  minds  even  of  ignorant  men  revolve  and  try 
to  resolve  the  problems  and  the  principles  of  what  world 
they  know,  meaning  to  find  the  heart  of  it,  to  make  a 
universe  of  it.  In  such  state,  each  man  in  his  degree  is 
a  philosopher.2 

It  is  not,  however,  with  the  natural,  the  seemingly 
inevitable,  philosophies  of  ignorant  or  half-taught  men 
that  the  science  of  education  is  concerned,  but  it  is 
rather  with  historical  philosophy  and  particularly  with 
the  highest  philosophy  to  which  man  in  the  modern  age 
has  at  last  attained.  This  highest  philosophy  is  by  no 
means  wholly  modern  :  it  is  very  largely  the  philosophy 
that  has  survived  the  academic  discussions  and  the  life- 
and-death  conflicts  of  many  ages  and  of  many  peoples. 
No  summary  of  this  final  philosophy  can  be  compassed 
in  the  pages  of  a  brief  chapter  :  nor  is  such  a  summary 
logically  within  the  purview  of  this  book.  While  in  a 
certain  sense,  the  educational  ideals  of  the  first  round 
—  Intelligency,  Efficiency,  and  Morality — express  them- 
selves in  concrete  examples  and  are  conditioned  by  such 
exemplification,  the  ideals  of  the  second  round  —  Science, 
Art,  and  Philosophy  —  are  independent  of  particular  in- 
stances and  modes.  Of  the  highest  ideal  in  this  cycle, 
Philosophy,  this  is  true  in  nearly  every  sense,  as  appears 
in  every  definition  of  Philosophy.  Let  us  call  it  "  the 
science  of  sciences"  or  "theory  of  rational  conduct"  or 

1  "  Two  things  fill  the  mind  with  ever-increasing  awe  and  admiration  : 
the  starlit  heavens  above,  and  the  moral  law  within."  Kant,  Works  (Rosen- 
kranz  transl.),  vol.  viii,  p.  312. 

1  This,  of  course,  is  the  lesson  taught  by  the  novelists,  conspicuously 
by  Dickens,  George  Eliot,  and  Hawthorne. 


PHILOSOPHY  345 

"unitary  view  of  knowledge"  or  "of  the  world"  or  "of 
life"  or  "system"  or  "history  of  pure  thought,"  Philo- 
sophy is  always  incorporeal,  remote  from  material  things, 
and  absorbed  in  the  things  that  are  spiritual,  —  that  is, 
in  the  life  beyond,  above,  and  within  living  things.  Sci- 
ence is  content  to  search,  to  know,  and  to  understand,  Art 
to  do,  to  make,  and  to  appreciate ;  but  Philosophy  is  con- 
tent only  to  think,  to  feel,  and  to  desire.  Science  is  out 
in  the  world,  Art  is  forthputting  one's  self  into  the  world  ; 
but  Philosophy  is  bringing  back  into  one's  self  all  that  one 
may  of  the  world  of  Nature  and  of  Man.  The  philosophy 
that  eventuates  may  hold  that  Nature  transcends  Man, 
produces  and  reduces  him,  or  may  hold,  diametrically 
opposite,  that  Man  conceives  Nature,  gives  it  the  appear- 
ance of  rationality,  and  endures  before  Nature  was  and 
after  it  shall  have  passed  :  whatever  the  opinion  be,  if  it 
be  able  to  render  its  reason,  it  is  still  Philosophy. 

Because  Philosophy  is  essentially  the  gathering  and 
folding  of  the  world  into  one's  self,  and,  therefore,  more 
purely  human  than  Science  or  Art,  it  is  both  historical 
and  personal.  The  wealth  of  one's  philosophical  treas- 
ures depends  upon  one's  knowledge  of  the  philosophies 
of  men  since  they  began  to  record  and  to  display  them ; 
but  to  their  possessor  the  value  of  these  treasures  de- 
pends upon  his  ability  and  inclination  to  use  and  to 
increase  them  by  his  own  thinking.  To  say  this  is  to  say 
more  than  that  the  eye  of  the  intellect  sees  in  all 
objects  what  it  brought  with  it  the  means  of  seeing,1  for 
it  includes  more  than  seeing,  —  considering,  rejecting, 
accepting,  absorbing,  utilizing,  interpreting.  And  it  is 
also  to  say  more  than  that  the  content  of  the  intellect 
comes  from  experience,2  for  it  includes  the  contents  of 
heart  and  of  will  also.  There  is  an  historical  philosophy 

1  Carlyle,   Collected  Works,  vol.  v,  p.  309    (now  a  very  common  ob- 
servation), 

2  Caldwell,  Schopenhauer's  System  in  its  Philosophical  Significance. 


346  THE   EVIDENCES   OF  CULTURE 

that  is  contained  in  logic,  in  ethics,  in  metaphysics,  and  in 
poetry  ;  and  there  is  another  historical  philosophy  incor- 
porate in  deeds,  in  institutions,  and  in  customs.  The 
books  one  may  read,  the  deeds  one  must  diligently  and 
anxiously  consider.  The  books  are  jewels;  the  deeds, 
metallic  ores. 

This  folding  of  the  world  into  one's  self  is  the  human 
quality  that  makes  man  what  he  is,  an  alien  from  all 
animals,  a  possible  son  of  God  upon  earth.  According 
to  his  disposition,  this  infolding  induces  in  the  individ- 
ual philosopher  his  particular  and  characteristic  mood; 
indeed,  it  converts  his  individuality  into  personality. 
For  although  personality  transcends  individuality,  even 
transforming  it,  reducing  (as  it  were)  the  various  ores 
of  the  original  soul,  each  to  its  pure  metal,  precious  or 
base,  overlaying  the  coarse  with  the  fine,  no  man,  what- 
ever be  his  education,  can  go  entirely  free  from  the  orig- 
inal heritage  and  bondage  of  temperament,  disposition, 
and  aptitude.1  Whether  for  good  or  for  ill,  the  past  of 
heredity  can  never  be  wholly  eradicated  or  converted. 
Regenerations  are  never  original  generations. 

The  individual  gives  to  his  philosophy  the  color  of  his 
own  soul.  The  philosophy  of  no  two  men  can  ever  be 
the  same ;  at  most,  we  are  but  sympathetic  occupiers  of 
similar  grounds.  As  Plato  interpreted  Socrates,  express- 
ing, expanding,  and  expounding  him,  far  beyond  his  own 
powers  of  self-revelation,  as  Fichte,  Schleiermacher,  Schel- 
ling,  Hegel,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  brood  of  the  post- 
Kantians,  without  perfect  agreement  among  themselves, 
developed,  improved,  corrected,  and  modified  the  mas- 
ter, none  ever  wholly  agreeing  with  him,  so  all  of  us, 
whether  empiricists,  materialists,  rationalists,  monists, 
pluralists,  naturalists,  idealists,  or  anything  and  every- 

1  "  The  biological  origin  of  mind  is  a  main  avenue  to  the  deeper  secrets 
of  the  universe  and  of  the  futurity  of  man."  Nichols,  Philosophical 
Review,  September,  1892,  p.  534. 


PHILOSOPHY  347 

thing  else  at  the  same  or  at  different  times,  disagree 
upon  some  articles  of  our  particular  faiths,  as  our  lives 
or  our  words  invariably  show.  And  this  color  of  the  soul 
displays  itself  in  contradictory  ways.  One  man  who  is 
by  nature  gloomy  becomes  a  disciple  of  the  philosophy 
of  fate  because  that  doctrine  comports  with  his  own 
mood,  fits  him  easily,  interprets  himself ;  while  another 
of  the  same  sad  nature  dons  the  garb  of  the  absolute 
idealist,  hoping  against  hope,  as  it  were,  that  the  natural 
man  in  him  is  entirely  wrong,  and  that  the  will  of  the  indi- 
vidual is  kin  and  companion  with  the  will  of  a  gracious, 
personal,  immanent  God. 

The  same  experience  functions  in  one  soul  in  one  mode, 
in  others  in  other  modes.  Yet  civilization  seems  to  induce 
persistently  the  mode  of  melancholy.  "  Every  man  hath  evil 
enough  of  his  own ;  and  it  is  hard  for  a  man  to  live  soberly, 
temperately,  and  religiously  ;  but  when  he  hath  parents  and 
children,  brothers  and  sisters,  friends  and  enemies,  buyers 
and  sellers,  lawyers  and  physicians,  a  family  and  a  neighbor- 
hood, a  king  over  him,  or  tenants  under  him,  a  bishop  to  rule 
in  matters  of  government  spiritual,  and  a  people  to  be  ruled 
by  him  in  the  affairs  of  their  souls  ;  then  it  is  that  every  man 
dashes  against  another,  and  one  relation  requires  what  an- 
other desires  ;  and  when  one  speaks,  another  will  contradict 
him ;  and  that  which  is  well  spoken,  is  sometimes  innocently 
mistaken,  and  that  upon  a  good  cause,  produces  an  evil  ef- 
fect ;  and  by  these  and  ten  thousand  other  concurrent  causes, 
man  is  made  more  than  most  miserable."  l 

Intelligence,  Efficiency,  Morality  ;  Science,  Art :  all 
these  add  knowledge  or  skill  to  man  ;  but  Philosophy 
adds  nothing  of  either  kind.  One  may  study  all  the 
histories  of  philosophies  and  all  the  philosophies  them- 
selves (and,  as  has  been  said  so  emphatically,  every 
philosopher  must  have  his  own  philosophy)  ;  in  the  end, 
he  will  know  nothing  that  he  did  not  know  before  and 

1  Jeremy  Taylor,  Works,  vol.  ix,  p.  316. 


348  THE    EVIDENCES    OF    CULTURE 

have  no  skill  that  he  did  not  have  before.  And  yet, 
paradoxical  as  it  seems,  unless  he  has  been  unable  to 
apprehend  them  in  the  least  particular,  he  is  certain  to 
be  a  different  man,  in  the  greater  or  less  degree  that 
marked  his  apprehension  of  philosophic  truth,  for  Phil- 
osophy, though  not  constructive  and  certainly  not  de- 
structive, is  reconstructive.  No  philosophic  truth  ever 
was  or  can  be  new  truth,  ever  did  or  can  destroy  any 
old  truth.  Thus,  Philosophy  has  no  war  with  Science 
or  Religion  or  Art  or  Politics  or  any  other  systematic 
activity  of  man.  The  business  of  Philosophy  is  to  evalu- 
ate all  truths  in  the  term  of  truth  itself,  to  the  extent 
that  the  philosopher  himself  knows  it,  —  to  collate,  to 
arrange,  to  systematize,  to  interpret,  and  to  appreciate 
them,  —  in  order  that  the  philosopher  may  possess  a  co- 
herent, rational,  truthful  world  of  thought,  of  action,  and 
of  affection.  Consequently,  with  every  new  truth  ac- 
quired, the  philosopher  is  obligated  by  his  profession  of 
philosophy,  whether  the  profession  be  private  only  or 
both  private  and  public,  to  square  his  philosophy  again 
so  that  the  new  truth  be  orientated  and  correlated  within 
the  philosophy.  And,  therefore,  it  follows  that  the  man 
with  a  mind  wide  open  to  the  world  of  reality  never  has 
a  finished,  final  philosophy.  Or,  to  put  this  conversely, 
a  true  philosophy  is  never  complete  ;  but  like  life  itself 
forever  changes  and  grows. 

What  of  the  foregoing  is  true  regarding  the  philosophy 
of  the  individual  as  he  proceeds  through  life  is  substan- 
tially true  of  Philosophy  itself  as  a  living  body  of  thought. 
In  the  history  of  Philosophy,  every  truth  and  every  opin- 
ion has  had  a  place,  a  meaning,  a  value  in  philosophical 
progress.  A  sane  man  has  never  had  a  false  philosophy  : 
imperfection,  incompleteness,  let  us  say  frankly,  ignor- 
ance, —  but  not  falsity,  not  even  error  without  return,  — 
has  characterized  the  opinions  of  men  regarding  Nature, 
Being,  Knowledge,  Duty,  Freedom,  and  Things-to-Come. 


PHILOSOPHY  349 

In  other  words,  from  Thales  to  the  latest  modern,  Philo- 
sophy has  advanced  continuously  and  has  widened 
immensely  its  line  of  march.1 

To  say  this  is,  of  course,  to  define  somewhat  my  own  posi- 
tion. Every  philosophy,  whether  of  Democritus  or  of  Berke- 
ley, is  substantially  true,  is  explicable  in  the  light  of  the  age, 
of  the  land,  and  of  the  quality  of  the  particular  philosopher 
declaring  it.  Moreover,  when  of  sufficient  importance  to  be 
considered  by  others,  it  has  necessarily  been  incorporated  in 
the  content  of  historical  philosophy.  The  reason  is  simple  : 
human  reason  is  one  among  all  men, .conditioning  humanity. 
Otherwise,  there  can  be  no  truth  for  all  men,  for  most  men, 
for  some  men,  or  for  any  man.  No  sane  man  can  reason  un- 
reasonably, untruly,  erroneously ;  but,  of  course,  he  may  be 
wrong  or  imperfectly  informed  as  to  his  data.  To  say  this  is 
not  to  juggle  with  the  term  sanity,  but  is  to  use  it  scientific- 
ally :  since  sanity  is  the  power  to  reason  correctly,  which 
postulates  correct  reason  as  the  common  possession  of  hu- 
manity and  truth  as  the  certain  attainment  of  reasoning  men. 
We  do,  in  fact,  go  even  so  far  as  to  say  that  no  one  can 
reason  wrongly,  for  that  is  nothing  else  than  not  reasoning 
at  all.  From  this  dialectic,  which  might,  no  doubt,  be  pre- 
sented more  in  detail,  the  familiar  conclusion  of  the  text  fol- 
lows, that  every  individual  philosophy  has  been  a  contribution, 
great  or  small,  and  never  a  detriment  to  the  sum  total  of 
Philosophy.  The  extent  of  its  contribution  has  been  measured 
by  its  originality. 

Every  man  tends  to  recapitulate  the  philosophy  of  the 
race  unless  he  interferes  with  the  natural  process  by 
reading  philosophy.  Such  philosophy  as  springs  from 
life  in  its  course  must  of  necessity  be  psychologically 

1  "  Any  one  who  is  acquainted  with  the  history  of  nineteenth  century 
thinking  would  say  that  one  of  its  great  characteristic  achievements  is 
to  have  shown  Nature  to  include  both  what  was  previously  known  as 
natural  and  what  was  previously  known  as  spiritual."  Caldwell,  Schopen- 
hauer's System  in  its  Philosophical  Significance,  p.  23. 


350  THE    EVIDENCES    OF    CULTURE 

sound  and  historically  uniform.1  Of  necessity,  each  man 
who  faces  life  intelligently  must  ask  the  great  questions, 
—  Whence  ?  Whither  ?  Why  ?  How  ?  The  forms  and 
occasions  of  these  questions  differ,  the  substance  is  ever 
the  same.2  The  answers  also  vary  in  their  forms,  though 
not  in  their  content.  But  to  reach  the  questions  too 
early,  to  anticipate  the  anxieties  of  life  before  experience 
has  given  the  facts  and  the  skill  required  to  endure  them, 
to  run  where  one  should  walk :  this  is  to  imperil  sanity 
itself,  as  the  suicide  of  many  a  young  student  so  sadly 
testifies.  Life  itself  in  its  haphazard  too  often  forces 
us  into  unnatural  positions  with  relations  essentially 
incomprehensible  to  the  insufficiently  experienced.3 
"Beware  who  ventureth,"  said  Gilder  of  the  sonnet, — 

"  For  like  a  fjord  the  narrow  floor  is  laid 
Deep  as  mid  ocean  to  the  sheer  mountain  walls." 

Such  a  sea  is  Philosophy,  —  a  sea  of  every  climate  and 
of  storm  and  calm.  But  the  sea  is  for  sailors  only  to  live 
upon,  to  enjoy,  to  grow  strong  thereon.  A  single  voyage, 
as  the  passenger  of  a  book  or  two,  is  enough  for  most. 
For  the  rest  of  our  philosophy,  we  content  ourselves  with 
the  tidal  inlets  that  cut  into  our  lands  and  with  the 
distilled  waters  that  fall  upon  us  gently  in  showers  from 
the  sky.  The  philosophy  of  the  books  is  indeed  often  a 
bitter  brine,  —  product  as  it  is  often  of  life  in  some  nar- 
row and  peculiar  reality.  Life  as  a  whole  is  not  life  as  seen 

1  "  The  real  philosopher  ought  not  to  be  content  with  a  view  of  the 
world  that  can  be  fully  expressed  in  abstract  conceptions."    Caldwell, 
Schopenhauer's  System  in  its  Philosophical  Significance,  p.  127. 

2  "  The  individual  now  confronts  the  world  with  as  pronounced  a  sense 
of  wonder  and  of  mystery  as  he  did  in  the  morning  of  creation."  Caldwell, 
Schopenhauer's  System  in  its  Philosophical  Significance,  p.  2O. 

8  This  may  be  stated  mechanically  in  the  terms  of  sociology  and  of 
psychology :  as  sociology,  in  that  the  individual  faces  the  problems  of 
larger  groups  or  different  groups,  not  yet  understood ;  and  as  psychology, 
in  that  he  faces  situations,  before  his  soul,  in  motives,  intellections,  affec- 
tions, intentions,  and  habits,  is  ready  for  them. 


PHILOSOPHY  351 

by  this  German  mysogenic  sensualist  or  that  French  de- 
cadent, nor  even  by  philosophers  generally  (for  Philo- 
sophers are  but  a  class,  and  not  the  type,  of  humanity) ; 
but  it  is  life  seen  by  all  men  and  women  in  all  lands  and 
ages,  and  this  life  is  good  and  satisfying  as  its  multipli- 
cation, extension,  and  intensification  demonstrate  to  the 
observant. 

Because  in  its  natural  course  the  philosophy  of  the 
individual  repeats  that  of  the  race,  the  history  of  Philo- 
sophy and  the  study  of  comparative  philosophy,  which 
displays  the  stage  attained  by  particular  nations,  take  on 
compelling  significance. 

An  extended  review  of  the  history  of  Philosophy  would 
be  disagreeable  here  to  the  common  sense  of  the  competent. 
It  is  enough  to  remind  ourselves  that  Philosophy  began  with 
a  naturalism  that  tried  to  construct  a  theogony  to  the  end 
that  man  might  relate  himself  wisely  to  the  reality  behind 
appearance  and  opinion.  In  other  words,  Primitive  Religion 
was  the  mother  of  Philosophy ;  and  Reason,  seeking  to  under- 
stand the  world,  was  its  father.  Conscience  taught  man  re- 
verence, reason  led  him  to  postulate  purposiveness,  and  ex- 
perience proved  to  him  that  the  purposiveness  was  not  the 
caprice  of  individual  gods,  but  a  universal  plan.  As  the  theo- 
logians had  grown  out  of  the  priests,  so  physicians  (physicists) 
were  to  grow  out  of  theologians.  School  succeeded  school, 
each  learning  from  its  predecessors  and  its  rivals.  Men  dis- 
cussed matter,  change,  permanence,  elements,  being,  becom- 
ing, and  anticipated  many  a  principle  of  the  modern  sciences. 
Philosophy  soon  discovered  itself  as  the  crucible  of  all  know- 
ledge. Materialism  arose  to  reveal  and  to  offset  spiritualism  ; 
and  pluralism  arose  to  explain  monism.  Methods  of  reasoning 
are  developed  and  systematized ;  and  we  are  able  to  isolate 
the  principles  of  hypothesis,  logic,  dialectic,  syllogism,  induc- 
tion. Space,  time,  motion,  series,  cause,  quantity,  quality,  and 
relation  are  disclosed.  Infinity  and  limitation,  eternity  and 
period  are  considered.  Creation  and  destruction,  life  and 
death,  society  and  the  individual,  one  after  another,  present 


353  THE   EVIDENCES   OF    CULTURE 

themselves  upon  the  philosophic  stage.  Man  is  learning 
himself,  as  a  whole,  and  in  detail.  Knowledge  and  skepticism, 
truth  and  falsity,  reason  and  sensation,  God  and  man,  soul  and 
body,  and  many  another  antithesis  furnish  foci  for  the  ellipse 
of  thought.  After  several  centuries,  metaphysics  comes  to 
know  itself  and  to  cast  out  physics  ;  and  Philosophy  assumes 
a  superiority  to  Science  never  afterwards  to  be  questioned  in 
its  own  thought.  Then  Philosophy  proper  becomes  critical ; 
and  symptoms  of  a  new  differentiation,  that  of  psychology, 
appear.  In  Socrates  and  Plato,  criticism  and  idealism,  the 
assertion  of  morality  per  se,  the  assertion  likewise  of  Philo- 
sophy as  supreme,  and  the  discovery  of  ideas  as  the  true 
realities  constitute  Philosophy  the  guide  of  human  life.  For 
those  who  can  understand,  Philosophy  has  become  forever 
the  highest  achievement  of  the  mind  of  man.  Aristotle  demon- 
strates this  by  accomplishing  the  broadest  and  most  original 
synthesis  of  knowledge  ever  attempted,  not  to  say  success- 
fully carried  out. 

We  are  now  upon  the  edges  of  the  world-transformations 
by  the  Roman  conquest,  the  Teutonic  invasions,  and  the  suc- 
cess of  Christianity.  Philosophic  progress,  like  all  progress, 
flows  with  many  windings,  often  subterraneously  in  darkness. 
Men  inquire  whether  life  is  worth  living,  how  to  make  it  tol- 
erable, how  to  get  the  greatest  happiness  out  of  it,  what  is 
pleasure,  what  is  truth,  what  is  virtue.  Polytheism,  pantheism, 
theism,  supernaturalism,  agnosticism :  each  goes  into  the 
battle,  and  truth  organizes  victory.  Stoicism  confronted  the 
world  of  politics ;  but  the  Caesars  represented  laws  and  forces 
triumphant  at  certain  stages  in  every  civilization  known  to 
history.  The  truth  in  stoicism  is  eternal,  rises  again  and 
again,  and  endures.  Men  inquired  whether  speculation  is 
not  useless  and  patient  obedience  to  Nature  the  one  duty. 
From  Rome,  the  centre  of  Philosophy  moved  to  Alexandria ; 
and  Hellenism  sought  reconciliation  with  Judaism.  Into  that 
struggle  of  thought,  monotheistic  Christianity,  with  its  dogma 
of  the  Son  of  God  become  man  to  save  mankind  and  men, 
projected  a  new,  a  genuine,  religion,  an  intense  faith  such  as 
civilization  had  not  known  since  Zeus  ruled  in  Greece,  Jupiter 


PHILOSOPHY  353 

in  Rome,  and  Osiris  in  Egypt.  Over  against  the  Utopia 
of  the  Stoa  for  the  solace  of  the  wise  and  the  great,  was  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  preached  by  Jesus  and  Paul,  for  the  com- 
forting of  the  ignorant  and  the  humble.  Eclecticism,  Gnos- 
ticism, Neo-Platonism,  Buddhism,  mysticism,  rationalism, 
theurgy,  fill  the  minds  of  philosophers  and  overflow  upon  their 
parchments.  The  world  that  Parmenides  thought  to  resolve 
into  simplicity  itself  has  become  complicated  beyond  the 
power  of  reason  to  resolve  :  the  question,  Can  God  commun- 
icate witk  man  ?  baffles  Philosophy.  The  doctrine  of  the 
Logos  is  revived,  the  Christian  world  recovers  Plato  and  later 
discovers  Aristotle,  who  for  a  thousand  years  is  accounted 
"  the  philosopher."  In  that  "  long  waste  of  years  "  until  Des- 
cartes, the  philosophic  world  debated  over  realism  and  nom- 
inalism (that  is,  idealism  and  materialism),  over  every  theo- 
logical doctrine,  from  the  nature  of  God  to  the  method  of 
redemption.  Asceticism,  imperialism,  revelation,  determinism, 
nature,  freedom  of  the  will,  innate  ideas,  theosophy,  a  new 
skepticism,  kept  scholasticism  busy  through  these  centuries 
while  other  great  questions  slept.  Then  arose  Giordano 
Bruno  to  set  Philosophy  once  more  free  from  Religion  as  Soc- 
rates had  set  it  free  two  thousand  years  before ;  and  to  die  as 
he  had  died,  because  State  and  Church  were  one  and  politics 
and  religion  indistinguishable.  He  took  his  first  principle 
from  the  new  physics :  God  is  natura  naturans,  and  the  world 
natura  naturata.  God  is  the  universe  transcending  the  world 
of  space  and  of  time.  After  the  Italian  came  an  Englishman, 
Francis  Bacon,  discoverer  and  expounder  of  a  method,  the  re- 
lation of  Science  to  Metaphysics.  Descartes  discovered  the 
question  and  answer,  reviving  for  metaphysics  the  certainty 
of  Science.  "  I  believe  that  I  may  know,"  said  the  Scholastics. 
"  I  doubt  that  I  may  know,"  queried  Descartes,  to  reply,  "  I 
think,  that  is,  I  am."  Thus,  the  world  of  Philosophy  found 
a  central  sun  of  certain  knowledge  about  which  to  revolve. 
Spinoza,  Leibnitz,  Berkeley,  Hume,  Kant,  Fichte,  Comte, 
Hegel,  Darwin,  Spencer,  with  their  respective  pantheistic, 
atomistic,  idealistic,  critical,  rational,  positivistic,  scientific, 
monistic,  evolutionary,  and  synthetic  philosophies,  follow  in 


354  THE    EVIDENCES    OF   CULTURE 

close  succession,  as  nations,  politics,  and  philosophies  expand 
and  multiply.1 

Anthropomorphism  —  God  in  the  image  of  man  —  is  long 
since  dead.  Darwin  has  taught  us  the  divine  method  of  evo- 
lution by  natural  selection,  and  De  Vries,  the  discoverer  of 
new  elementary  species  by  mutation,  has  supplemented  the 
doctrine  of  the  origin  of  species  by  inherited  small  variations. 
Hall  has  demonstrated  that  the  soul  as  well  as  the  body  is 
immensely  old,  a  silent  treasury  of  forgotten  but  ineradicable 
pasts.  Whole  departments  have  been  established  in  philo- 
sophy, teleology,  epistemology,  ontology,  ethics,  metaphysics  ; 
and  psychology,  integrated  decades  ago,  is  itself  breaking  up 
into  genetic,  physiological,  intellectual  departments,  not  long 
hence  to  be  separate  sciences.  As  for  physics,  matter  has 
become  force,  centres  of  energy  ;  and  physics  (natural  philo- 
sophy) has  broken  into  a  score  of  sciences.  The  early  Hel- 
lenic philosophy  nurtured  every  one  of  these  modern  sciences, 
from  chemistry  to  sociology  and  from  metaphysics  to  biology. 

The  old  idea  that  it  is  worth  while  to  know  historical 
philosophy  that  one  may  appropriate  its  light  for  one's 
own  pathway  has  broken  down  from  several  causes. 
The  mass  of  it  is  beyond  the  powers  and  opportunities 
of  most  men  to  acquire  ;  the  gist  of  it  —  the  reasons  and 
the  conclusions — is  all  necessarily  contained  in  the  most 
recent  modern  philosophy ;  the  whole  needlessly  excites 
the  soul  by  reviving  what  for  most  of  us  may  well  lie 
dead ;  and  the  great  questions  have  all  been  isolated  and 
may  be  studied  in  their  integrity,  freed  from  the  false 
issues  of  the  outgrown  past.2 

What  is  worth  while  is  familiarity  with  these  ques- 
tions and  with  their  most  profitable  answers.  This  famil- 
iarity involves  understanding  certain  terms  :  materialism, 

1  Cf.  Harris,  Address,  Social  Culture  in  the  Form  of  Education  and 
Religion,  Congress  of  Arts  and  Sciences,  St.  Louis,  1904.  [Rogers,  ed.j 
Vol.  viii,  First  Paper. 

J  Cf.  Perry,  Approach  to  Philosophy,  of  which  this  proposition  is  the 
thesis. 


PHILOSOPHY  355 

dogmatism,  rationalism,  idealism,  pluralism,  monism, 
determinism,  reality,  matter,  force,  will,  reason,  God,  ego, 
Nature,  voluntarism,  morality,  good,  truth,  beauty,  love. 
The  great  questions  are  :  Does  God  live  in  and  love  the 
world  ?  Am  I  immortal  ?  May  I  become  so  ?  Is  will, 
reason,  or  emotion  the  dominant  quality  in  God  ?  in 
man  ?  What  is  right  ?  Does  God  transcend  Nature  ?  Is 
Nature  or  the  universe  God  ? l  Is  Nature  primarily  spir- 
itual or  mechanical  ?  Is  it  possible  to  know  goodness, 
truth,  beauty  ?  These  questions  take  innumerable  forms. 
Can  man  know  anything  ?  Yes,  answered  Descartes. 
What  does  this  include  ?  asked  Kant.  And  modern 
Philosophy  accepts  his  answer,  which  is  that  man  can 
certainly  know  his  own  thought.  "  Nature,"  says  one 
historian  of  Philosophy,  "is  an  evolution,  of  which 
infinite  Perfection  is  both  the  motive  force  and  the 
highest  goal."2 

One  who  knows  this  philosophy,  understanding  the 
reasons  for  it,  has  attained  almost  the  highest  stage  of 
which  man  is  capable.  He  may  not  be  able  to  express  it 
adequately,  perfectly,  uniformly  in  his  conduct,  because 
practical  life  seeks  but  cannot  fully  realize  its  ideals  ; 
yet  he  has  the  possibility  of  reaching  the  highest  stage. 
This  possibility,  this  desire  for  perfection,  this  sense  of 
imperfection  glorifies  the  world  about  him  and  his  own 
life  also.  As  the  universe  dignifies  each  star  and  planet, 
so  Philosophy  dignifies  mind  and  man.  By  its  philosophy, 
every  age  stands  or  falls  ;  by  his  philosophy,  each  man 
reveals  himself  to  those  who  may  understand.3 

1  "  I  have  read  somewhere  that  Philosophy  has  always  been  chiefly 
engaged  with  the  inter-relations  of  God,  Nature,  and  Man.  The  Greeks 
occupied  themselves  mainly  with  the  relations  between  God  and  Nature, 
and  dealt  with  Man  separately."  The  Christian  Church  thought  of  God 
and  Man  and  neglected  Nature.  Modern  philosophers  think  of  Man  and 
Nature  and  cannot  remember  God.  Ball,  History  of  Mathematics,  p.  281. 

1  Weber,  translated  by  Thilly,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  603. 

*  Cf.  Home,  Philosophy  of  Education,  p.  281. 


356  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   CULTURE 

In  education  and  culture,  therefore,  the  true  function 
of  Philosophy,  the  motive  for  its  study,  is  the  rationaliz- 
ing of  the  individual  by  relating  his  thoughc  to  historical 
and  contemporaneous  thought,  by  balancing  his  idiosyn- 
cracy  over  against  general  humanity,  by  universalizing 
the  man  in  the  atmosphere  of  infinity,  eternity,  reason- 
able cause,  of  absolute  duty  to  God,  and  of  rational  serv- 
ice to  humanity.  Thus  conscience  becomes  intelligent, 
energetic,  and  sensitive;  and  the  will-to-live  is  justified 
by  knowledge  of  what  is  worth  while  and  sweetened  by 
love  of  fellow  sojourners  upon  the  world,  scaffolded  by 
time,  space,  cause,  and  every  other  of  the  present  limita- 
tions of  the  soul  in  man. 

For  the  categories  of  the  human  mind  are  in  a  sense 
limitations  as  he  passes  out  of  ignorance  into  the  light. 
"There  is  no  darkness  but  ignorance,"  said  Shakespeare.1 
And  we  are  as  much  puzzled  in  it  as  the  Egyptians  in 
their  fog.  But  because  of  our  effort  to  see  light  we  can- 
not employ  all  our  energy  to  see  other  things  and  phases 
of  this  universal  world.  To  direct  energy,  to  withhold  its 
dissipation,  is  to  limit  it.  Thus,  the  very  development  of 
our  finiteness  by  directing  it  to  ends  fences  it  in  with 
barriers  ;  as  we  grow  intense  we  withdraw  our  extensions 
of  reverie,  abstractedness,  vague  longings.  The  philo- 
sophy of  this  appears  in  the  theory  of  education  by 
knowledge  incorporate  in  this  inquiry  into  the  theory  of 
education.  Knowledge  as  such,  knowledge  consisting  of 
items  stored  in  the  memory,  flitting  about  in  conscious- 
ness, subject  to  sporadic,  spontaneous,  undesired  recall, 
is  of  little  direct  use.  In  fact,  as  soon  as  such  items  of 
information,  as  we  say,  become  so  disciplined  as  to  be 
of  use,  they  become  organized,  systematized,  and  subject 
to  intentional  recollection.  Mere  information  is  one  of 
the  two  "  mothers  "  of  interest  in  the  human  soul ;  the 
other  is  inherited  instinct.  It  may  be  that  only  such 

1  Twelfth  Night,  Act  iv,  Scene  ii. 


PHILOSOPHY  357 

information  as  supplies  the  demand  of  some  instinct 
inherited  as  taste  is  found  interesting.  We  may  say  that 
knowledge  functions  as  interest,  and  that  this  function- 
ing of  knowledge  is  its  lowest,  most  elementary  mode  of 
action.  In  its  passive  aspect,  such  informing  knowledge 
is  a  form  of  thought ;  in  its  active  aspect  it  is  a  mode  of 
thinking.  In  respect  to  this  matter,  it  is  perfectly  true 
that  one  may  know  too  much  for  his  own  good,  for  one 
to  whom  the  opportunities  have  come  to  observe  and  to 
read  many  things  may  be  found  in  a  condition  of  excess- 
ive mental  dissipation.  All  his  thinking  will  be  peri- 
pheral.1 The  central  consciousness  is  vague,  extense,  and 
unillumined.  His  thoughts  radiate  outward,  not  focally. 
In  the  process  of  gratification  by  being  supplied  with 
facts,  interests  function  as  desires,  purposes,  and  judg- 
ments. It  is  at  this  point  that  man  discovers  his  three- 
fold nature,  —  emotion,  conation,  and  intellection  ;  heart, 
will,  and  intellect.  All  these  are  but  attitudes  or  disposi- 
tions toward  truth.  Emotion  accepts  or  believes  truth 
and  directs  it  internally ;  conation  uses  truth  and  exer- 
cises it  externally  ;  intellect  confronts  truth  to  know  and 
to  examine  it.  Desires  and  purposes,  combining,  function 
as  motives.  Desires  and  judgments,  combining,  function 
as  ideals.  Purposes  and  judgments,  combining,  function 
as  intentions.  Motives,  ideals,  and  intentions,  combining, 
function  as  habits;  and  habits,  combining,  function  as 
character.  Knowledge,  then,  functioning  in  its  first 
power  as  judgment,  becomes  in  its  second  power  an  ideal, 
and  in  its  third  a  habit ;  and  the  habit,  functioning 
as  the  fourth  power  (as  it  were)  of  knowledge,  becomes 
the  sense  of  duty  or  of  necessity  or  of  righteousness. 

1  He  realizes  too  little  the  truth  that  "  in  comparison  with  our  know- 
ledge, Being  is  inexhaustible"  (Hoffding,  Problems  of  Philosophy,  p.  112), 
and  in  trying  to  exhaust  the  opportunities  of  learning  the  facts  of  Being 
wrecks  knowledge  itself  by  accumulating  too  much  and  constructing  too 
little. 


358  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   CULTURE 

Knowledge  functions,  again,  as  desire ;  becomes  inten- 
tion ;  becomes  habit ;  and  blossoms  as  the  sense  of  utility 
or  of  value  or  of  goodness.  Once  more,  knowledge  func- 
tions as  purpose  ;  proceeds  to  judgment ;  is  established  as 
habit ;  and  evolves  finally  as  the  sense  of  conduct  or  of 
decorum  or  of  beauty.  Thus  by  origination  and  process 
the  right,  the  good,  and  the  beautiful,  —  the  true,  the 
kind,  the  desirable,  —  derive  in  due  order  from  know- 
ledge, the  form  proper  to  mind,  the  food  by  which  it 
grows  from  spirit  into  reality. 

The  sum  of  one's  original  instincts  is  one's  tempera- 
ment ;  the  sum  of  one's  interests  is  one's  disposition. 
Infancy  develops  instincts  and  inhibits  them ;  child- 
hood develops  interests  and,  by  absorbing,  outgrows 
them  ;  youth  develops  desires,  purposes,  and  judgments, 
and  forgets  them  in  the  higher  life  of  later  adolescence, 
in  which  they  reappear  strengthened  and  glorified  as 
motives,  ideals,  and  intentions ;  maturity  develops  and 
systematizes  habits,  and  old  age  summarizes  them  all  as 
character,  which  is  the  true  expression  of  wisdom,  our 
personal  solution  of  the  problems  of  love  and  hate,  of 
good  and  evil,  the  real  form  of  the  personal  soul. 

For  instincts  as  compared  with  rationalized  habits 
are  as  shapes  compared  with  forms,  and  as  acts  compared 
with  processes.  Absolutely  universal  is  the  mission  of 
mechanism  ;  entirely  subordinate  to  spirit  is  mechanism  ; 
but  mechanism  by  removing  obstructing  shapes  and  by 
devising  appropriate  forms,  by  inhibiting  bad  acts  and 
disciplining  activity  until  it  becomes  due  process  and 
reliable  conduct,  delivers  lawfully  the  spirit  from  bondage 
to  license  and  proposes  it  as  an  integral,  free  soul,  dis- 
playing character  and  ready  for  a  better  work,  a  harder 
discipline  and,  we  may  hope,  a  happier  life  later  else- 
where. 


CHAPTER   XVII 

HEALTH  AND  HOLINESS 

So  every  spirit  as  it  is  most  pure, 

And  hath  in  it  the  more  of  heavenly  light, 

So  it  the  fairer  body  doth  procure 

To  habit  it,  and  it  more  fairly  dight 

With  cheerful  grace  and  amiable  sight, 

For  of  the  soul  the  body  form  doth  take. 

SPENSER,  Hymn  in  Honor  of  Beauty. 

If  we  give  more  to  the  flesh  than  we  ought,  we  nourish  an  enemy  ;  if  we  give  not  to  her 
necessity,  we  destroy  a  citizen.  —  SAINT  GREGORY,  Homilies,  iii,  secund.  parte  Ezech. 
(Quarles,  Emblems,  p.  51). 

Mind  makes  the  man,  and  our  vigor  is  in  our  immortal  soul.  —  OVID,  Metamorphoses, 
xiii. 

Therefore,  all  things  whatsoever  ye  would  that  men  should  do  to  you,  do  ye  even 
so  to  them.  —  MATTHEW,  Gospel,  vii,  12,  a  saying  of  Jesus. 

To  be  hale,  healthy,  whole  is  the  greatest  blessing  in 
life.  In  civilization,  health  seems  to  be  conditioned  by 
intelligence,  knowledge,  ambition,  and  morality  rather 
than  to  condition  them  ;  seems  to  be  a  result  rather  than 
primarily  a  cause.  And  for  two  reasons.  In  civilization, 
many  physically  unfit  persons  become  parents.  And 
civilization  seems  to  wreck  the  health  of  very  many.  It 
is  difficult  to  measure  health  and  healthy  persons  quan- 
titatively, statistically. 

The  truth  may  perhaps  appear  upon  two  investigations, 
one  negative,  the  other  by  enumeration. 

Whether  born  healthy  or  not,  in  civilization  one  may 
easily  lose  one's  health  because  of  lack  of  intelligence, 
as  a  child,  by  fault  or  deficiency  of  parents,  as  an  adult, 
of  one's  own  motion ;  bad  or  insufficient  or  irregular 
feeding,  darkness  of  abode  or  working-place,  bad  air, 
dampness,  excess  of  alcoholic  drinks,  or  of  tobacco,  or 
of  drugs,  or  of  sexual  gratification,  deficiency  of  sleep, 


360  THE   EVIDENCES    OF   CULTURE 

inactivity  of  body,  in  short,  failure  to  understand,  by 
observation  of  others  and  by  introspection  of  one's  self,  the 
relations  of  cause  and  effect.  There  are  in  civilized  so- 
ciety but  few  persons  who  are  strong,  active,  vital,  healthy. 
Again,  from  sheer  lack  of  knowledge,  health  may  be 
wrecked  by  a  single  ignorant  act  or  slowly  exhausted  by 
a  series  of  acts.  He  who  really  knows  human  anatomy, 
physiology,  and  hygiene  and  the  facts  and  principles  of 
social  hygiene,  who  can  realize  their  truth  and  is  willing 
to  observe  their  lessons,  may  be  able  to  remain  well  in 
civilization,  which  is  the  city.  Even  more.  Unless  born 
deformed  or  deranged,  however  weak  one  may  be,  one 
may  win  health,  surprisingly  good  health,  by  accumulat- 
ing physiological  knowledge  and  obeying  its  teaching.1 
Nature  means  men  to  be  well,  strong,  and  active.  But 
one  may  be  intelligent  and  well  informed,  and  yet  weak 
or  sickly,  or  as  we  often  say  "  morbid,"  predisposed  to 
disease  and  not  combating  the  idea.  It  is  necessary  also 
to  desire  to  be  well.  Herein  the  mind  controls  the 
body  ;  not,  indeed,  to  the  extent  of  curing  serious  diseases, 
of  healing  broken  bones,  of  immediately  revolutionizing 
its  structure  and  tissue.  But  as  Nature  does  all  vital 
things,  quietly  and  in  order,  so  does  she  assist  the  weak 
to  grow  well.  Though  as  a  race,  as  communities,  as  in- 
dividuals, men  do  ten  thousand  things  to  offend  the  good 
mother  of  us  all,  she  is  still  ever  ready  to  forgive,  pro- 
vided we  repent.  The  secret  of  ten  thousand  thousand 
miraculous  "  cures  "  lies  in  the  cells  that  Nature  is  al- 
ways glad  to  build  anew,  provided  the  organizing  soul 
desires  it.  To  the  dipsomaniac,  to  the  sex-pervert,  to  the 
hypochondriac,  to  the  neurasthenic,  Nature  says  :  If 
you  will  but  endure  the  agony  of  repentance,  I  will 
make  you  whole  again.  But  all  these  may  count  for 
naught, — intellect,  knowledge,  ambition,  —  for  the  soul 
of  the  health  of  the  body  is  the  soul  itself :  let  us  call  it 

1  e.  g.  the  famous  old  book,  How  to  Get  Strong,  by  Blaikie. 


HEALTH   AND    HOLINESS  361 

prosaically  "sound  morals."  One  may  so  sin  against 
Nature  or  against  man  as  not  to  care  to  get  well  again  in 
this  life.  Such  an  one  desires  surcease  of  sorrow  in 
death.  But  the  immoral  do  live  long  and  prosper  ?  A 
few,  yes  ;  but  not  many.  "  For  the  wages  of  sin  is  death." 
Man  should  live  to  be  eighty  or  a  hundred,  as  we  all  know. 
But  the  cemeteries  are  full  of  the  graves  of  those  who  have 
died  before  their  time  ;  nor  do  the  burial  certificates  tell 
the  truth.  In  many  cases,  —  shall  I  say  two  in  three  or 
nine  in  ten  ?  —  instead  of  "  pneumonia,"  "consumption," 
"  brain  disease,"  "  cholera  infantum,"  and  any  other  of 
the  long  and  usually  tragic  list,  —  for  the  death  of  a  man, 
like  that  of  the  animal,  is  usually  a  tragedy,1  —  should  be 
written  "a  violation  of  the  law  of  Nature."  The  pity  of 
these  early  deaths,  which  cost  the  race  so  much,  is  that 
so  many  of  them  are  the  results  of  social  rather  than  of 
personal  immorality.  They  are  the  effect  of  the  environ- 
ment, the  "fates,"  not  the  choices  of  the  individuals 
destroyed. 

Perhaps,  in  the  mind  of  God,  all  sins  are  the  result  of 
such  fate.  Who  is  to  hold  the  child  of  the  slum  guilty 
when  he  surrenders  to  drunkenness  and  lechery  ?  Not 
he  who  never  knew  the  slum.  Who  is  to  hold  the  child 
of  the  palace  guilty  when  he  surrenders  to  the  dissipation 
and  too  often  the  sin  of  the  society  that  bred  him  ?  Not 
he  who  never  knew  the  palace.  Who  is  to  hold  the  child 
of  the  country  suddenly  exiled  into  the  city  responsible 
for  the  unmooring  of  conduct  in  that  maze  which  must 
appear  to  him  hysteria  ?  Not  he  who  never  knew  the 
exile  and  the  ecstasy.  We  are  not  qualified  to  judge. 
We  must,  however,  examine  the  record.  Perhaps  these 
immoralities,  at  least  the  personal  immoralities,  which 
destroy  health,  life,  soul,  are  in  some  measure  prevent- 
able by  personal  education. 

We  educate  for  law,  for  business,  for  teaching,  for 

1  Burroughs,  Long,  Thompson-Seton  all  emphasize  this  fact. 


362  THE   EVIDENCES    OF  CULTURE 

"society,"  for  carpentry,  for  forestry,  and  for  what  not, 
save  for  living.  Why  not  educate  for  living  ?  Why  not 
educate  for  healthy  physical  living  ?  Why  not  ?  The  only 
reason  is  because  we  do  not.  And  this,  of  course,  is  no 
reason  at  all  —  but  a  confession. 

The  essence  of  living  is  health ;  but  in  civilization 
health  can  seldom  be  attained  or  even  maintained  by 
direct  effort.  The  first  prerequisite  to  health  is  life  itself  ; 
and  in  civilization  one  receives  the  means  for  life  only 
by  economic  effort  or  by  some  form  of  gift  from  others. 
There  are,  it  is  true,  many  forms  of  economic  effort  that 
are  directly  favorable  to  health,  —  farm-labor,  teaming, 
tracklaying,  indeed,  all  manner  of  outdoor  work  and  of 
muscular  exertion.  But  by  no  means  all  modes  of  labor 
are  favorable  to  health.  Of  the  thirty  million  Amer- 
icans over  ten  years  of  age  now  engaged  in  "gainful" 
occupations,  a  very  considerable  proportion  are  engaged 
upon  such  conditions  of  hours  of  services  or  of  surround- 
ings or  of  materials  employed  as  are  essentially  injurious 
to  health.  The  abnormally  high  death-rate  of  mankind 
is  sufficient  evidence  of  this.1  And  of  these  thirty  mil- 
lion, many  are  sick  persons  who,  if  they  work  at  all, 
should  earn  a  sufficient  surplus  over  bare  cost  of  living 
to  enable  them  to  cultivate  their  health  in  hours  and 
days  when  not  at  work.  Of  this,  again,  the  death-rate 
is  evidence  that  few  actually  do  earn  such  a  surplus. 

In  order,  therefore,  to  remain  or  to  become  healthy  in 
civilization,  it  is  first  necessary  to  obtain  a  livelihood  — 
or,  in  other  words,  to  find  and  to  hold  a  place  in  the  eco- 
nomic world,  the  world  of  dollars  and  cents,  of  payment 
for  value  received.  This  fact,  this  bitter  fact  of  the  world 
higher  than  and  remote  from  primitive  communal  man- 
kind, this  fact  of  private  property,  work-for-wages,  no- 
service-no-necessaries,work-or-freeze-and-starve-to-death, 

1  Of  children  condemned  to  certain  kinds  of  labor,  but  one  in  three  or 
four  survives  to  manhood,  as  the  unchallenged  current  statistics  show. 


HEALTH    AND    HOLINESS  363 

may  be  the  power  that  is  driving  the  race  forward  by 
compelling  effort  all  along  the  line  ;  but  nevertheless  it 
is  the  power  that  hour  by  hour  removes  the  invalid  poor 
from  the  face  of  the  green  earth. 

The  view  that  "  wealth  is  the  siren  that  lures  labor  on  "  * 
is  seen  from  the  vantage-point  of  those  whose  food,  shelter, 
clothing,  and  fuel  are  guaranteed,  and  is  not  discovered  from 
the  vantage-point  of  the  multitudinous  proletarians.  The  man 
who  does  not  need  to  work  for  a  living  often  does  work  for 
wealth  ;  but  he  is  not  the  typical  man  in  a  civilization  wherein 
even  the  land  to  live  on  must  be  won  at  a  price.  Not  the  food 
lures,  but  the  hunger  drives,  most  men. 

The  city  school  superintendent  must  necessarily  be  familiar 
with  the  procession  to  the  gates  of  death.  Thither  go  the 
young  babe  whose  parents  were  too  poor  to  dare  to  send  for 
the  two-dollar-a-visit  doctor  until  too  late  ;  the  child  whose 
bad  teeth  were  extracted  to  avoid  the  costly  services  of  the 
dentist ;  the  child  with  poor  eyes, —  run  over  by  car  or  wagon 
for  want  of  proper  glasses ;  the  worn-out  mother  of  a  large 
family  dead  from  underfeeding,  undersleeping,  overwork,  and 
overworry ;  the  father  whose  cough  ran  into  consumption  be- 
cause he  could  not  leave  his  indoor  work 2  and  let  his  children 
starve,  but  whose  children  nevertheless  do  starve  when  he  is 
gone  ;  and  all  the  other  victims  of  the  competition  for  employ- 
ment. 

But  granted  good  health  at  birth  and  sufficient  cloth- 
ing, shelter,  and  fuel  until  manhood,  in  civilization  health  is 
not  yet  assured.  Many  things  are  necessary  to  render  this 
blessing  secure  against  the  forces  tending  to  its  destruc- 
tion. Disease  is  evidence  of  hygienic  sin,  not  conclusive 
evidence,  to  be  sure,  but  presumptive.  And  death  before 
old  age,  unless  by  accident,  is  overwhelming  evidence. 
For  the  man  who  has  lived  with  some  regard  for  the  laws 
of  Nature  may  be  ill  because  of  a  lapse  in  hygienic 

1  Clark,  Philosophy  of  Wealth,  p.  25. 

J  Riis,  How  the  Other  Half  Lives  ;  Spargo,  The  Bitter  Cry  of  the 
Children. 


364  THE    EVIDENCES   OF   CULTURE 

morals  ;  yet  he  will  not  die.  His  vital  reserve,  the  bank 
account  with  which  the  good  Mother  endowed  him  in 
the  womb,  will  meet  the  draft.  But  he  who  has  often 
sinned  with  or  without  punishment  is  certain  some  day 
to  overdraw  that  account.  Nature  means  men  to  resist 
the  microbes  of  tuberculosis  and  of  pneumonia  and  the 
acids  of  rheumatism.  The  purpose  of  oxygen  and  of 
sleep  is  to  burn  up  waste  tissue  and  to  eliminate  the 
poisons  of  fatigue  and  of  infection.  He  who  breathes  an 
abundance  of  good  air,  drinks  enough  water  to  flood  his 
system,  takes  enough  exercise  to  vitalize  his  tissues,  and 
sleeps  long  enough  to  clear  his  body  is  not  likely  to 
"die  before  his  time  :  "  yet  most  men  and  women  do  die 
for  want  of  these  simple  virtues. 

In  respect  to  health,  there  is,  however,  no  need  of 
experiment,  no  need  of  ignorance,  no  need  of  hypothet- 
ical theorizing.  Consequently,  there  is  no  personal  excuse 
for  hygienic  sinfulness  unless  there  is  cause  beyond  per- 
sonal control.  For  in  respect  to  health,  we  owe  absolute 
obedience  to  Nature  within  the  limits  of  our  opportun- 
ities and  heritage.  We  owe,  therefore,  definite  consid- 
eration of  the  facts  and  principles  of  physiology,  which 
we  should  study  as  a  science,  and  of  hygiene,  which  we 
should  practice  as  an  art,  in  order  that  we  may  know  what 
the  commands  of  Nature  are.  By  such  care,  we  fit  our- 
selves to  live  healthily  in  the  sorry  maze  of  this  difficult 
civilization.  But  such  care  only  the  privileged  few  may 
exercise. 

To  go  free  in  the  world,  to  be  able  to  take  in  lungfuls 
of  air,  to  enjoy  work,  care,  and  even  anxiety,  to  eat  with 
good  cheer  and  to  sleep  in  peace,  to  feel  that  life  is  a 
play  of  the  spirit  rather  than  a  labor  of  the  flesh,  to 
be  strong  enough,  and  to  dare  to  look  every  other  human 
being  in  the  eye,  to  be  unafraid  in  the  crowd  or  in  soli- 
tude, to  know  and  to  feel,  love  and  pity  and  reverence  : 
this  it  is  to  be  whole,  to  be  healthy.  To  achieve  this,  and 


HEALTH   AND    HOLINESS  365 

to  express  it,  it  is  often  necessary  to  undergo  a  severe 
regimen  and  even  surgical  operations  in  order  to  correct 
the  ills  of  inheritance  and  the  injuries  of  poverty  in 
childhood  and  youth.  To  be  willing  to  undergo  these 
remedial  measures  requires  intelligence  and  character 
beyond  most  youth.  As  long  as  we  inherit  spinal  curva- 
tures, eyes  defective  in  vision  or  in  external  muscular 
accommodation,  bad  teeth  or  the  conditions  that  produce 
these ;  as  long  as  parents  persist  in  drinking  too  much 
alcohol,  or  in  smoking  or  chewing  too  much  tobacco,  or 
in  sexual  excess,  or  in  overwork  and  undersleep ;  as  long 
as  ignorance,  fraud,  and  previous  poverty,  the  three 
causes  of  all  present  poverty,  endure ;  as  long  as  luxury 
ruins  the  few  and  poverty  injures  the  many, —  so  long 
will  most  children  be  born  too  weak  in  will  to  win  health 
out  of  their  weakness  or  wickedness  or  evil  fate.  But 
some  will  strive,  and  a  few  will  succeed.  One  who  has 
transformed  invalidism  into  health  is  more  likely  to  use 
that  health  well  than  another  to  whom  health  was 
given.  Democracy  is  founded  upon  the  doctrine  that  one 
who  wins  power  is  far  more  fit  to  wield  it  than  one  who 
inherits  power.  So  with  health. 

But  health  is  not  only  a  matter  of  body  and  of  will.  It 
is  also  a  matter  of  work,  of  work  exalted  to  art,  of  work 
exulting  in  strength  and  skill  and  become  play,  the  free 
adventure  of  the  spirit  creating  things  or  performing 
services.  In  all  ages,  labor,  work,  and  service  have  been 
signs  of  the  menial  and  degraded,  and  in  all  languages, 
the  words  indicating  work,  labor,  and  service  have  been 
ignominious  and  irritating ;  and  for  one  sole  reason,  — 
they  have  designated  the  life-occupation  of  persons  sub- 
jected to  the  will  of  superiors.  The  tendency  of  all  such 
subjection  has  been  to  destroy  the  health  of  the  body 
and  the  health  of  the  soul.  We  have  seen  this  in  the 
extreme  forms  of  plantation  slavery,  of  mercenary  sol- 
diery, and  of  feudal  serfdom.  We  see  it  now  in  the 


366  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   CULTURE 

extreme  forms  of  wage-service  in  mines,  in  mills,  in  stores, 
in  packing-houses,  and  in  domestic  employment.  One  of 
the  chief  purposes  of  intentional  alcoholic  intoxication 
and  of  sexual  excess  is  to  feel  the  ecstasy  of  relief  from 
control  by  the  will  of  others.  This  ecstasy  mimics  the  joy 
of  true  health  by  causing  in  the  soul  a  pseudo-euphoria ; 
but  it  costs  too  dear  because  it  short-circuits  the  long 
natural  winding  ascent  right  up  the  mountain-side  of 
true  health.  Such  as  commit  these  excesses  cut  their 
way  ruthlessly  to  results  and  lose  all  the  education  of 
passing  wholly  through  each  process.  They  cannot  know 
what  true  manhood  and  womanhood  are,  what  good  life 
really  contains  and  expresses. 

Learning,  doing,  conduct,  truth-seeking,  love  of  beauty, 
and  the  search  for  wisdom  are  but  the  rungs  of  a  ladder 
whose  sides  are  health  and  creation.  To  get  better,  to 
grow  stronger,  in  such  phrases  the  soul  speaks  its  desire 
for  physical  health.  To  imitate  things  and  acts,  to  initiate, 
to  invent,  to  create,  in  such  phrases  in  ascending  scale 
of  aspirations,  the  soul  speaks  its  desire  for  spiritual 
health.  He  is  whole  who  in  his  originality  is  independent 
of  physical  and  psychical  conditions  within  himself  ;  and 
this  independence  can  be  secured  only  by  the  long  train- 
ing that  wins  through  self-mastery.  The  mastery  of  the 
world  by  understanding  it,  at  best  but  partial,  is  little 
more  than  an  incident  in  the  process  ;  as  far  as  it  is  more 
than  an  incident,  it  is  only  a  means.  The  frame  of  this 
world  passes.  Any  other  world,  many  another  world,  let 
us  suppose,  would  serve  as  well  as  this  in  the  schooling 
of  the  living  soul. 

As  the  educated  man  nears  such  perfection  as  is  pos- 
sible to  the  best  of  human  beings,  his  desire  and  his 
power  to  discern  and  to  produce  the  new  and  the  perfect 
increases  rapidly.  The  roll-call  of  the  immortals,  how- 
ever, shows  that  each  failed  in  greater  or  less  degree 
completely  to  endure  the  processes  of  education  and  to 


HEALTH   AND   HOLINESS  367 

conform  to  its  ideals,  the  greatest  failing  least,  succeeding 
most. 

It  is  perhaps  as  fanciful  as  it  is  accidental  that  in  this 
text  the  ideals  of  education  and  of  culture  should  appear 
to  be  seven  in  number.  Ruskin  likened  seven  ideals  of 
architecture  to  seven  lamps,  after  the  fashion  of  the 
seven  golden  candlesticks  seen  by  Saint  John  in  apo- 
calyptic vision. l  These  seven  ideals  appear  like  the  seven 
stars  of  the  same  vision.  We  can  never  attain  to  them  ; 
but  we  may  travel  by  their  light  to  the  desired  haven. 
Pure  intelligence,  entire  efficiency,  sinless  morality,  all 
truth,  immaterial  beauty,  errorless  wisdom,  perfect  health : 
to  not  one  of  these,  by  no  manner  of  means  to  all,  may 
any  human  being  attain.  And  yet  by  discipline,  by  un- 
remitting effort,  by  information  ever  welcomed,  by  dream 
and  by  sacrifice,  he  may  attain  to  the  power  to  contribute 
something  new  and  worth  while  in  a  form  or  by  a  mode 
agreeable  to  his  fellow  men.  At  every  stage  in  the  pro- 
cess, he  may  daily  in  greater  or  less  measure,  as  he 
nears  the  goal  in  ever  greater  measure,  repay  to  society 
the  cost  of  his  life.  Not  in  selfishness  or  in  pride  will  he 
win  to  that  goal;  but  only  in  generous  mood  and  in 
docility  may  he  go  forward,  remembering  that  not  the 
goal,  but  the  journey,  is  his  reward. 

In  this  journey,  he  is  seeking  the  perfection  of  which 
alone  is  the  finite  soul  capable,  holiness.  From  the  heights 
of  modern  thought  to  which  some  have  ascended  by 
obeying  the  Master,  it  may  be  clearly  seen  that  body 
and  soul,  intellect,  heart,  and  will,  matter  and  spirit  are, 
for  the  purposes  of  the  life-journey,  of  the  world-school- 
ing, inseparable.  There  is  no  dualism  in  righteousness. 
The  physical  life  may  be  stainless,  while  the  soul  is 
suffused  with  passions  :  the  man  is  unclean,  imperfect, 
distraught,  unholy.  The  spirit  may  be  full  of  kindness 

1  Vide  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture.  Also,  Osborn,  "  Seven  Factors  in 
Education,"  Educational  Review,  June,  1906. 


368  THE   EVIDENCES   OF   CULTURE 

toward  others  and  of  desire  to  grow  into  the  light,  while 
the  body  is  weighted  and  warped  by  many  a  lust  of  the 
flesh  :  the  man  is  unclean,  imperfect,  distraught,  unholy. 
The  dull  and  ignorant  intellect  blocks  the  strong  will  by 
inaoility  to  perform  its  purposes  and  baffles  the  kindest 
heart  by  perverting  its  impulses.  The  weak  will  undoes, 
retards,  wrecks  the  plan  of  the  keen  intellect  and  the 
aspiration  of  the  loving  heart.  One  who  sees  and  knows, 
who  directs  his  course  and  holds  to  it  firmly,  may  for 
want  of  affection,  loyalty,  or  sympathy  fail  of  that  com- 
pleteness, serenity,  sanity  which  is  holiness.  These 
qualities,  though  distinguishable  in  the  process  of  de- 
velopment, are  inseparable  in  the  final  result. 

Too  long  we  have  thought  of  health  as  a  mere  phys- 
ical desideratum,  as  something  incidental  and  not  abso- 
lutely necessary ;  of  holiness  as  a  religious  ideal,  aside 
from  the  concerns  of  politics,  business,  education,  culture, 
property,  and  family.  We  have  allowed  ourselves  to 
think  of  holiness  as  a  symptom  of  senility.  True,  it  flowers 
in  middle  life  and  bears  fruit  in  old  age.  In  our  best 
moments,  we  know  that  all  the  glory  of  a  long  life,  the 
visible  evidence  that  it  has  been  well  spent,  is  to  wear 
the  halo  —  to  develop,  as  it  were  from  the  soul  itself, 
the  atmosphere  —  of  holiness. 

Of  the  old  man  and  of  the  old  woman,  we  love  to 
think,  we  can  scarcely  prevent  ourselves  from  thinking, 
in  this  one  term,  holiness.  There  is  no  higher  praise 
than  the  comment,  —  a  hale  old  man  and  good,  his  mind 
filled  with  pleasant  memories,  his  soul  serene  with  the 
consciousness  of  temptations  resisted,  obstacles  over- 
come, and  victory  won.  Because  we  think  of  the  old  in 
this  one  term,  there  is  nothing  whatever  in  all  the  world 
that  so  grieves  the  heart,  confuses  the  intellect,  and 
offends  the  will  as  to  see  an  old  man  nearing  the  veiled 
gates,  in  decrepitude  of  <body,  dullness  of  intellect,  mean, 
vicious,  flooded  with  memories  of  defeats  of  the  spirit. 


HEALTH   AND   HOLINESS  369 

Holiness  is  the  character  to  be  won  in  life  by  a  good  will 
toward  life  ;  and,  therefore,  it  is  the  one  highest  ideal, 
the  final  outcome,  of  education. 

Upon  the  old  man,  sitting  apart  quietly  in  the  aloof- 
ness of  old  age,  there  seems  to  rest  the  blessedness  of 
absolution  from  sins  and  sinfulness.  Upon  him  has  de- 
scended the  last  benediction  of  life,  its  extreme  unction. 
He  has  made  ready  to  be  called  away,  upon  his  face  is 
written  expectancy  of  the  call,  and  his  manner  reveals 
peace.1  As  for  us  who  are  younger  travelers,  we  have 
yet  to  learn  the  patience  and  the  faith  of  old  age,  the 
crowning  age  of  life.  We  cannot  bring  ourselves  to  say 
that  old  age  and  death  are  the  best  blessings  because 
the  last ;  and  yet  we  know  and  really  believe  that  they 
are.  For  every  man,  we  desire  long  life  and  a  happy  old 
age,  and  death  not  in  sudden  torment,  but  in  quiet  expira- 
tion of  the  breath.  This  desire  is  the  keynote  in  which 
is  pitched  the  song  of  our  human  life.  Let  me  live  as 
long  as  I  may  live  honorably,  that  I  may  die  regretted, 
but  without  regrets.  The  soldier  who  goes  to  battle  for 
his  country,  the  laborer  who  goes  to  work  for  his  family, 
the  wife,  the  teacher,  the  man  of  business  and  all  others, 
one  and  all,  offer  the  same  human  prayer. 

1  It  is  time  to  be  old, 
To  take  in  sail :  — 
The  god  of  bounds, 
Who  sets  to  seas  a  shore 
Came  to  me  in  his  fatal  rounds, 
And  said,  "  No  more  !  " 

As  the  bird  trims  her  to  the  gale, 
I  trim  myself  to  the  storm  of  time, 
I  man  the  rudder,  reef  the  sail, 
Obey  the  voice  at  eve  obeyed  at  prime  : 
"  Lowly  faithful,  banish  fear, 
Right  onward  drive  unharmed; 
The  port,  well  worth  the  cruise,  is  near, 
And  every  wave  is  charmed." 

Emerson,  Terminus.    Cf.  Tennyson,  Crossing  the  Bar. 


370  THE   EVIDENCE   OF   CULTURE 

"  Grow  old  along  with  me  ! 
The  best  is  yet  to  be, 

The  last  of  life,  for  which  the  first  was  made : 
Our  times  are  in  His  hand 
Who  saith,  'A  whole  I  planned, 
Youth  shows  but  half ;  trust  God :  see  all,  nor  be  afraid.' "  1 

Because  life  is  sacred,  death  is  likewise.  The  good  old 
men  and  women  see  this  sacredness  in  all  relations  and 
walks  of  life  because  they  sit  apart,  conscious  that  they 
are  near  the  gates  of  exit.  To  the  toilers,  an  understand- 
ing is  often  denied.  Life  seems  the  cheapest  of  all  com- 
modities ;  and  so  it  may  be  in  the  terms  of  business ; 
but  the  good  old  man  sees  life  in  all  its  terms.  He  sees 
all  life  clearly,  and  he  sees  it  whole.  Not  so  with  him 
who  in  old  age  has  his  gaze  still  riveted  upon  particular 
aims.  Such  an  one  becomes  peculiarly  horrible  in  his  vice, 
whatever  it  be,  —  avarice,  envy,  drunkenness,  lechery, 
lying,  —  and  peculiarly  pitiable  in  his  weakness,  what- 
ever it  be, — timidity,  invalidism,  indecision,  vanity,  im- 
patience. To  us,  he  seems  to  have  made  a  failure  of  life,  — 
though  he  may  have  won  millions  or  fame  or  power,  he 
has  not  gathered  from  life  its  fruit,  which  is  preparedness 
to  live  again.  Not  he  who  in  old  age  recounts  his  mis- 
takes and  exhausts  his  little  strength  in  vain  regrets, 
not  he  who  boasts  of  his  successes  and  wears  himself  out 
in  vain  mimicry  of  the  efforts  of  his  prime,  but  he  who 
recognizes  what  is  fit,  as  the  pulse  runs  down  and  desire 
fails,  and  deports  himself  accordingly,  honors  human 
nature,  and  by  his  own  life  expresses  its  final  glory. 

1  Browning,  RaSbi  Ben  Ezra. 


PART   FIVE 

MOTIVES   AND  VALUES   IN   EDUCATIONAL 
PRACTICE 

American  scholarship,  through  its  ministry  in  the  universities, 
through  its  teachings  and  its  teachers,  is  to  remove  the  evil,  to 
instruct  the  ignorant,  to  broaden  the  narrow,  to  elevate  the  low, 
and  to  transmute  the  brutal  into  the  human,  and  the  human  into 
the  divine.  —  THWING,  History  of  Higher  Education  in  America, 
p.  466. 


CHAPTER   XVIII 

HABIT,    CHANGE,  AND    ILLUSIONS    OF    CHANGE 

The  higher  the  mental  grade  of  the  organism  and  the  more  varied  the  conditions  of  its 
life,  the  greater  is  the  balance  of  intelligence  remaining  beyond  the  period  of  youthful 
plasticity  for  further  adaptation  in  adult  life.  —  MORGAN,  Habit  and  Instinct,  p.  158. 

To  know  the  past  is  a  duty;  to  be  in  touch  with  the  present,  an  imperative  necessity ; 
to  have  constantly  in  mind  the  future,  a  privilege  that  will  prove  the  source  at  once  of 
comfort  and  of  inspiration.  —  HARPER,  The  Trend  in  Higher  Education :  "  The  Old  and 
the  New,"  p.  119. 

Through  ages  innumerable,  we  look  back  over  an  infinitely  slow  series  of  minute  ad- 
justments, —  material  undulations  among  individual  molecules,  mental  discriminations  of 
likenesses  and  of  unlikenesses, — gradually  and  laboriously  increasing  the  points  of  con- 
tact between  the  inner  Life  and  the  World  environing,  until  at  the  critical  moment  evolu- 
tion shifts  to  a  higher  plane  and  the  nascent  Human  Soul  reaches  forth  toward  some- 
thing akin  to  itself,  not  in  the  realm  of  fleeting  phenomena,  but  in  the  Eternal  Presence 
beyond.  An  internal  adjustment  was  achieved  in  correspondence  with  an  Unseen  World ; 
and  man  knew  his  essential  kinship  with  the  ever-living  God.  —  FISKE,  Through  Nature 
to  God  (arranged  from  pp.  33,  188,  191). 

HABIT,  change,  and  illusions  of  change  form  the  proces- 
sion of  the  events  of  conscious  life.  Habits  may  be  in- 
stinctive and  congenital  or  acquired  ;  but  they  are  always 
automatic  in  their  operation.1  Changes  may  be  acci- 
dental or  voluntary  ;  they  may  be  either  enforced  by  cir- 
cumstances or  originated  in  the  choice  of  the  individual. 
The  greatest  lives  are  those  at  once  most  controlled  by 
choice  and  furnished  with  the  most  habits.2  To  acquire 
new  habits  and  to  eradicate  older  habits,  which  may  or 
may  not  have  been  useful  in  their  time,  is  as  much  the 
purpose  of  education  as  to  control  instinctive  activities 
and  already  established  habits. 

"Communities,"  said  Daniel  Webster,  "are   respon- 
sible as  well  as  individuals."3  For  communities  are  free 

1  Morgan,  Habit  and  Instinct,  p.  27. 

*  Baldwin,  Mental    Development,  Ethical  and    Social  Interpretations^ 
p.  164. 

*  Vide  Bunker  Hill  Monument,  second  oration. 


374      MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

to  acquire  habits,  to  make  changes  by  choice,  and  to 
modify  their  characters  in  accordance  with  new  truth. 
But  the  responsibility  of  the  community,  though  vastly 
greater  than  that  of  the  individual,  is  abstract  and  sec- 
ondary, while  that  of  the  individual  is  primary  and  con- 
crete. In  a  material  sense,  there  is  no  such  reality  as  a 
community  :  there  is  only  an  aggregation  of  individuals. 
Educating  a  community,  enlightening,  benefiting,  in- 
forming, directing,  degrading,  debauching,  robbing  a 
community  :  each  of  these  phrases  is  but  a  figure  of 
speech.  Yet  within  the  figure  of  speech  is  an  idea  ;  and 
this  idea  is  a  reality  of  the  spirit,  a  reality  many  times 
stronger  than  the  reality  of  the  human  body  of  the  indi- 
vidual. 

By  "  consciousness  of  kind,"  to  use  the  phrase  of  Giddings, 
groups,  classes,  societies,  communities  of  men  are  brought 
together  to  reinforce  their  sense  of  likeness  and  agreement. 
The  stranger  introduced  among  associated  men  and  the  vari- 
ant born  within  their  number  have  but  the  choice,  to  agree  or 
to  oppose  "  the  social  mind."  The  history  of  these  agree- 
ments and  oppositions  is  the  material  for  all  sociologists,  — 
Gumplowicz,  Tardes,  Le  Bon,  Spencer,  Bosanquet,  Giddings. 
This  history  contains  the  mechanical  explanation  of  all  wars, 
strifes,  concords,  councils,  events,  movements,  since  men  first 
dwelt  in  villages  by  the  ancient  mid-earth  sea. 

The  community  moulds  the  individual  even  to  the 
extent  of  transforming  him  into  its  own  image, — unless 
he  resists  the  process.  Even  so,  it  moulds  him  into  its 
opposite.  Thus,  oppression  produces  the  hero  from 
among  the  meek  oppressed ;  sordidness,  the  generous 
benefactor  from  among  the  sordid  ;  and  every  evil  and, 
alas  !  every  good,  its  opposite.  And  why  ?  Because  hu- 
manity, seeking  completeness  and  universality,  is  ready 
for  every  experiment  and  for  every  variation. 

It  is  useless  to  try  to  understand  the  reason  or  the 
nature  of  many  things.  Before  the  final  problems,  the 


HABIT,  CHANGE,  AND  ILLUSIONS  OF  CHANGE    375 

human  mind  sinks  abashed.  Is  this  universe  finite  or 
infinite  ?  If  finite,  is  there  an  infinity  of  finite  universes  ? 
How  do  other  worlds  differ  from  this  ?  What  am  I  ? 
How  does  grass  grow  ?  What  is  evil  ?  Why  does  the 
good  God  permit  or  cause  it  ?  Is  He  good  ?  Is  He  omni- 
potent ? *  These  and  a  thousand  other  questions  that 
children  ask,  and  we  all  ask,  are  useful  only  to  stir  the 
soul  from  self-content  and  to  enforce  the  truth  that  the 
world  is  a  school  for  education,  not  for  acquiring  final 
concrete  knowledge.  We  can  no  more  carry  facts  into 
the  life  beyond  death  than  we  can  carry  silver  and  gold. 

These  eternal  questions  have  their  greatest  value  in 
that  they  are  not  yet  answered  :  therefore,  they  serve  to 
stir  the  souls  of  the  millions  of  each  generation.  The 
child  discovers  them  ;  and  wonders.  Each  new  question 
is  to  him  a  new  mountain-top  with  vaster  outlook  upon 
life.  Each  one  of  us,  over  and  over  again,  rediscovers 
them  when  facing  new  vistas  of  experience.  In  a  sense 
it  is  the  same  with  the  petty  questions  of  life  that  may 
be  answered.  We  think  that  we  have  gained  new  wis- 
dom when  very  often  we  did  the  same  thing  in  the  same 
way  with  the  same  contentment,  last  year,  ten  years  ago. 

Before  birth,  as  Lotze  remarked  half  a  century  ago,  there 
proceed  astonishing,  unaccountable  physical  changes, — 
recapitulations  of  the  past,  vital  experiments,  outlived 
or  abandoned,  —  whose  issue  is  the  new-born  babe, 
prepared  to  live  in  the  air  upon  the  surface  of  the  earth, 
eager  to  grow  in  bulk  many  times  and  in  strength  yet 
more,  but  never  to  change  greatly  in  any  essential  feature 
save  in  that  which  is  to  be  associated  psychically  with 
the  new  birth  twelve  or  fourteen  years  afterwards.  Before 
that  new  birth  of  puberty  into  adolescence,  there  proceed 

1  God  is  perfect.  The  Universe  is  in  progress.  Who  can  resolve  this 
antinomy  ?  God  is  infinite.  Man  is  finite.  Who  can  reconcile  these  in- 
commensurate truths?  Cf.  Kant,  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  (Watson, 
transl.),  p-  US- 


376      MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION' 

other  and  still  more  astonishing  changes  in  the  soul. 
When  we  remember  that  one  babe  in  five  is  still-born  or 
dies  within  ten  days  after  birth,  and  that  two  in  five  die 
within  a  year  of  birth,1  we  can  see  how  severe  Nature's 
first  examination  is.2  Yet  no  child  of  normal  mentality 
ever  goes  insane.  Tyler  calls  adolescence  "  Nature's  sec- 
ond examination."  3  Not  only  is  it  accompanied  by  insan- 
ity, but  the  entire  sex-life,  both  physical  and  psychical, 
seems  to  constitute  a  predisposition  to  insanity  and  to 
suicide.  Before  adolescence,  sex  is  quiescent,  prepotent 
rather  than  potent,  discoverable  rather  than  aggressive. 
Before  adolescence,  the  boy  and  the  girl  display  racial, 
ancestral,  ancient  heredities.  In  adolescence,  more  imme- 
diate paternal  and  maternal  traits  struggle  for  mastery, 
the  boy  trying  to  put  off  the  general  human  qualities 
and  to  devote  himself  to  what  is  typically  manly  and  the 
girl  to  become  womanly.  Often  it  is  a  battle  royal.  Of 
the  changes  proceeding  now,  few  are  illusory ;  most, 
indeed,  are  more  serious,  more  recreative,  more  profound 
than  they  seem,  cutting  clean  into  the  marrow  of  life. 

Stronger  than  the  habits  of  communities,  far  stronger 
than  the  habits  of  individuals,  are  the  habits  of  the  social 
institutions,  which  indeed,  when  cross-sectioned  at  any 
particular  time,  appear  to  be  all  habits,  pure  conventions 
without  any  voluntary  intellectual  processes.  This,  too, 
is  illusion.4  One  who  imagines  that  the  social  institutions 

1  Spargo,  The  Bitter  Cry  of  the  Children,  p.  10,  and  authorities  cited, 
passim. 

2  A  test  vitiated,  of  course,  by  the  factor  of  the  economic  opportunity 
of  the  parents  to  provide  food,  medicine,  nursing,  etc.,  adequately. 

3  Growth  and  Education. 

4  "  Doctrines  vanish  without  a  direct  assault ;  they  change  in  sympathy 
with  a  change  in  apparently  remote  departments  of  inquiry  ;  superstitions, 
apparently  suppressed,  break  out  anew  in  slightly  modified  shapes  ;  and 
we  discover  that  a  phase  of  thought  that  we  had  imagined  to  involve  a 
new  departure  is  but  a  superficial  modification  in  an  old  order  of  ideas." 
Stephen,  History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  p.  3. 


HABIT,  CHANGE,  AND  ILLUSIONS  OF  CHANGE   377 

are  permanent  and  changeless  is  deceived  as  much  as 
one  who  imagines  himself  a  voluntary  agent,  freely 
choosing  and  changing  his  course  in  life.  The  working 
doctrines  of  Property  and  of  Family,  the  basic  theory  of 
what  the  State  is  and  for  what  it  is,  the  conception  of 
what  Business  may  rightly  undertake,  the  very  psycho- 
logy of  the  race  changed  when  a  man  could  no  longer 
give  his  own  body  as  pledge  for  a  debt.  These  all  will 
change  again  when  a  man  cannot  give  the  homestead  of 
his  Family  as  a  pledge  for  debt.1 

For  ideas  construct,  destroy,  and  reconstruct  the 
world.  The  notion  that  men  are  the  sons  of  God  and 
therefore  equal  brothers  has  overthrown  monarchy  and 
aristocracy,  established  democracy,  severed  Church  and 
State,  and  subordinated  religion  to  politics..2  It  will  yet 
establish  equality  of  opportunity  in  economic  affairs 
and  make  education  and  culture  the  chief  business  of 
life.  To  use  the  phrases  of  Lord  Acton,  it  has  been  "  a 
doctrine  laden  with  storm  and  havoc,"  and  is  "  the  secret 
essence  of  the  Rights  of  Man  and  the  indestructible  soul 
of  revolution."  It  will  make  impossible  starvation  in  the 
midst  of  plenty  and  ignorance  in  the  midst  of  knowledge.3 

In  its  degree,  every  idea,  great  and  little,  is  a  trans- 

1  Fixing  the  individual  family  to  the  land  is  the  first  duty  of  the  State, 
and  being  fixed  to  the  land  somewhere  is  the  first  duty  of  the  adult  man  : 
—  propositions  that  transcend  in  importance  any  and  all  others  now  being 
considered  in  civilization. 

2  Acton,  The  Study  of  History,  p.  17. 

3  Such  starvation  is  unknown  among  savages ;  it  began  with  barbar- 
ism.   "  Labor  or  starve,  though  there  is  abundance  for  all ;  labor  for  the 
privilege  of  bread,"  was  the  cry  of  kings  and  of  nobles,  founded  aristocra- 
cies, monarchies,  autocracies,  of  every  kind,  founds  a  possible  plutocracy 
now.    Our  various  social  institutions  are  incomplete  in  number  and  in 
function  because  they  permit  wrongs  now  that  once  could  not  be, — 
social  wrongs  which  show  that  society  is  not  yet  self-conscious  and  there- 
fore cannot  be  just.  The  fancy  that  strong  men  will  not  labor  unless 
they  must  (a  contradiction  in  terms,  for  strength  loves  work)  is  no  defense 
of  the  poverty  of  children  and  of  the  aged,  of  the  invalid  and  of  the  ignor- 
ant, no  defense,  but  a  confession  of  the  incompleteness  of  civilization. 


378       MOTIVES   AND  VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

former  of  habits  and  a  converter  of  wills.  And  yet  in 
individuals,  in  communities,  in  the  institutions  of  society, 
habits  have  been,  are,  and  forever  will  be  nearly  all  of 
life.  The  human  body  in  its  myriad  processes,  the  human 
soul  with  its  fathomless  memories,  the  human  crowd  with 
its  intricate  maze  of  opinions,  the  social  institution  with 
as  many  historical  origins  as  a  mighty  river  has  tribu- 
taries and  sources,  could  not  be  operated  from  moment 
to  moment  by  independent  acts  of  will.  Therefore  the 
past  lives  in  the  present,  and  indeed  is  nearly  all  of  the 
present.1  What  we  in  our  pride  call  "  the  present," 
"modern  times,"  "the  new  idea,"  is  but  the  edge  of  the 
difference  by  which  the  limits  of  a  particular  recent  past 
and  of  the  now  are  parted.  The  sum  of  these  differences 
through  the. ages  is  vast.  I  and  my  ancestor  of  ten 
thousand  years  ago  would  find  our  thoughts  incommuni- 
cable and  one  another  incomprehensible.  I  and  one  who 
has  grown  in  entirely  different  surroundings  from  differ- 
ent ancestry  may  find  ourselves  complementary  and 
agreeable,  or  we  may  find  ourselves  so  antagonistic  that 
'our  only  relief  from  the  strain  of  juxtaposition  is  battle. 
Two  likenesses  and  two  differences  unite  me  with  and 
divide  me  from  my  fellows.  What  I  know  and  desire 
that  he  does  not  know  or  desire,  and  what  he  knows  and 
desires  that  I  do  not  know  or  desire,  set  us  over  against 
one  another.  The  masses  of  similar  knowledge  and  opin- 
ion and  the  forces  of  similar  habits  and  motives  bring  us 
together.  We  may  associate  for  mutual  help  because  of 
our  differences  ;  we  may  collide  and  struggle ;  or  we  may 
part  in  peace :  but  we  may  never  be  of  one  and  the  same 
mind. 

From  the  separation  of  men  by  differences  in  ideas, 
this  age  apparently  suffers  less  than  any  other  because 
of  certain  of  our  inventions,  of  our  discoveries,  and  of 

1  Mitchell,  The  Past  in  the  Present ;  Kirkpatrick,  Fundamentals  of  Child 
Study :  Instincts. 


HABIT,  CHANGE,  AND  ILLUSIONS  OF  CHANGE    379 

our  social  institutions.  Type,  press,  mail,  periodicals, 
books,  typewriters,  telegraph,  telephone,  school,  library, 
university,  theatre,  opera,  church,  lodge,  ballot,  council, 
legislature,  horse,  bicycle,  automobile,  electric  railway, 
steam  railroad,  lecture,  mill,  factory,  mine,  store,  office 
building,  —  all  conspire  to  acquaint  men  with  common 
ideas  and  to  train  them  in  common  habits.  Yet  the  separa- 
tion is  greater  in  reality  than  in  appearance,  because  men 
differ  from  the  extreme  of  many  opportunities  to  get 
knowledge  to  the  extreme  of  none,  and  from  the  extreme 
of  surpassing  ability  applied  industriously  to  great  op- 
portunities to  the  extreme  of  dullness  indifferent  to  small 
opportunity.  In  ideas  and  habits,  Caesar  differed  not  more 
from  the  Roman  slave  than  Grant  differed  from  the 
American  slave. 

One  man  looks  out  upon  the  world  and  sees  particular 
things  in  isolation,  sees  fragments,  not  wholes ;  another 
looks  out  and  sees  the  same  things  in  their  modern  com- 
parative relations  to  groups,  communities,  social  institu- 
tions, and  also  in  their  historical  relations,  knowing  the 
stages  and  processes  and  motives  by  which  they  have 
come  to  be  what  they  are.  One  has  all  the  instincts,  in- 
tuitions, innate  ideas,  'categories,  grounds  of  sufficient 
reason  that  the  other  has ;  but  the  first  exhausts  his 
resources  in  the  simpler  psychological  processes  of  sen- 
sation, perception,  memory,  while  the  other,  without 
fatigue,  runs  all  the  gamut  of  thought.  The  latter  un- 
derstands, can  stand  up  under,  the  burden  of  knowledge, 
bearing  it  easily,  moving  it  freely.  Such  were  Kepler, 
Newton,  Leibnitz,  Comte,  Helmholtz,  Spencer,  Darwin, 
Agassiz.  And  such,  as  Plato  taught,  should  be  the  rulers 
of  men,  because  they  are  their  leaders.1 

For  several  reasons,  the  School  does  not  respond  read- 
ily to  new  truths,  is  peculiarly  conservative  of  the  past, 
is  governed  by  habits  that  have  perhaps  been  discarded 

1  The  Republic;   The  Laws. 


380      MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

years  ago  by  adult  men  living  in  the  modern  regions  of  the 
world.  To  an  exposition  of  the  first  reason,  the  foregoing 
passages  of  the  present  chapter  have  been  devoted. 
Every  social  institution  changes  slowly,  painfully,  reluc- 
tantly. Property,  Family,  Church  change  even  less  than 
does  the  School.  Every  particular  family,  church,  school 
has  its  own  traditions  and  customs  that  give  it  a  charac- 
teristic atmosphere.  The  new  member  usually  surrenders 
soon  to  its  ideas  and  sentiments.  But  the  cultural,  the 
political,  and  the  economic  institutions  change  more 
freely.  The  reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  Most  of  them  are 
as  yet  in  the  processes  of  formation ;  and,  therefore,  they 
best  display  the  activities  of  the  modern  age. 

In  the  School,  kinesis  proceeds  slowly  because  of  cer- 
tain characteristics  peculiar  to  it.  The  School  like  the 
Protestant,Church  has  passed  over  into  the  mood,  if  not 
the  actual  control,  of  women.  Even  the  Catholic  Church 
finds  most  of  its  workers  and  active  members  among 
women.  That  woman  is  more  conservative  than  man  is 
a  commonplace  of  psychology.  Nearly  all  the  actual 
teachers  of  the  classes  of  pupils  of  elementary  schools 
in  the  cities,  towns,  and  villages  are  women. 

The  textbook  is  a  factor  making  for  conservatism. 
The  history  of  the  publication  of  new  truth  is  this.  It  is 
discovered  and  discussed.  Accounts  appear  in  mono- 
graphs. Synthetic  minds  incorporate  in  treatises  the 
teachings  of  the  monographs.  University  lecturers  study 
the  treatises  and  expound  them  in  their  class-rooms. 
Their  pedagogical  disciples  finally  present  these  views 
in  practical  texts,  which  the  boys  and  girls  study.  Even 
in  an  age  of  steam-power  and  of  rapid  printing,  the  pro- 
cess takes  a  generation  when  no  controversy  delays  the 
progress  of  the  new  idea  within  the  schools.1  Sometimes, 
for  want  of  controversy,  the  new  truth  is  ignored  and 
almost  forgotten. 

1  Le  Bon,  The  Psychology  of  Socialism,  passim. 


HABIT,  CHANGE,  AND  ILLUSIONS  OF  CHANGE    381 

Another  factor  making  for  the  undue  preservation  of 
the  past  in  the  education  of  the  present  is  the  persistence 
of  men  of  average  talent  and  of  gentle  character  in  the 
few  positions  not  occupied  by  women.  Though  teaching 
is  still  the  most  attractive,  honorable,  and  dignified,  if 
not  the  most  lucrative,  of  all  the  vocations  open  to 
women,  it  is  by  no  means  so  in  the  case  of  men.  But 
men  of  average  talent  and  of  amiable  character  are  not 
the  leaders  of  the  race,  the  builders  of  institutions,  and 
the  reformers  of  society. 

Still  another  factor  is  the  undue  importance  of  laymen 
in  the  political  offices  that  control  the  public  school  and 
as  patrons  of  the  private  school.  The  layman  and  the 
laywoman.  remember  their  own  educational  experience 
and,  of  course,  have  no  adequate  knowledge  of  profes- 
sional progress  since  they  went  to  school.  Sometimes, 
these  lay  persons  are  discontented  with  their  own  school- 
ing and  desire  something  better  for  the  children  of  the 
present  generation.  But  these  instances  are  few.  Only 
men  and  women  either  of  unusual  natural  gifts  of  mind 
or  of  later  and  larger  educational  advantages  ever  know 
that  the  educational  processes  by  which  they  came  to  be 
what  they  are  may  not  be  the  best  possible  processes. 
It  is  as  hard  for  a  man  to  imagine  what  he  would  have 
been  if  he  had  been  instructed  by  different  teachers  as 
it  is  for  him  to  imagine  what  he  would  have  been  if  he 
had  been  born  of  different  parents.  He  is  as  incredulous, 
even  as  scornful,  of  the  one  idea  as  of  the  other. 

Again,  many  of  the  teachers  and  some  of  the  super- 
visory force  are  really  but  lay  persons,  often  without 
even  a  veneer  of  professional  knowledge. 

Unfortunately,  these  several  factors  conspire  together, 
—  the  strong-willed,  ill-informed  layman  confronts  the 
lonely,  gentle  schoolmaster  and  the  crowd  of  schoolmis- 
tresses and  overcomes  them  often  by  his  very  faults. 

Another  factor  is  poverty.  Changes  in  schoolhouse 


382       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

architecture  and  increase  in  equipment,  changes  in  text- 
books and  additions  to  grounds-,  and  improvement  and 
enlargement  of  faculty,  cost  money.  They  involve  diver- 
sion of  wealth  from  present  habitual  uses  to  new  uses  : 
whether  to  do  this  and  how  best  to  do  this  require  con- 
sideration, consideration  requires  time,  and  the  time  of 
the  lay  ruler  is  worth  money,  and  he  refuses  to  give  the 
thought  required  to  understand  the  situation. 

Apparently,  for  the  maintenance  of  the  past  in  the 
present  and  for  the  shutting-out  of  the  new  with  the 
blind  or  necessary  continuance  of  the  old,  a  vicious  circle 
has  been  established.  This  is  certainly  true  in  the  case 
of  the  public  school. 


CHAPTER   XIX 

MOTIVES   AND    VALUES    OF   SUBJECTS 

The  first  and  last  and  closest  trial  question  to  any  living  creature  is :  What  do  you  like  ? 
Tell  me  what  you  like,  and  I  will  tell  you  what  you  are.  —  RUSKIN,  Crown  of  Wild 
Olive. 

The  knowledge  that  will  hold  good  in  working,  cleave  thou  to  that,  for  Nature  herself 
accredits  that,  says  Yea  to  that.  Properly  thou  hast  no  other  knowledge  but  what  thou 
hast  got  by  working :  the  rest  is  all  a  hypothesis  of  knowledge  ;  a  thing  to  be  argued  of  in 
schools,  a  thing  floating  in  the  clouds,  in  endless  logic-vortices,  till  we  try  it  and  fix  it.  — 
CARLYLE,  Essay  on  Labor,  p.  185. 

The  natural  desire  to  learn  about  the  things  with  which  one  has  relationships  we  call 
interest :  it  is  the  signboard  pointing  the  direction  in  which  education  must  proceed.  — 
O'SHBA,  Education  as  Adjustment,  p.  151  (abridged). 

AN  enumeration  by  title  of  the  educational  and  cul- 
tural subjects  and  systems  of  exercises  in  the  schools, 
colleges,  and  universities  would  fill  many  pages  of  this 
book.  Even  by  groups  the  list  is  long,  —  mathematics, 
languages,  histories,  athletics,  gymnastics,  calisthenics, 
literatures,  sciences,  arts,  philosophies.  Of  modern  cul- 
ture, it  is  not  possible  for  any  one  to  know  much  :  it  is  too 
vast  and  profound.  It  becomes,  therefore,  perforce  desir- 
able to  evaluate  the  various  forms  and  modes  of  culture 
in  order  to  pursue  those  which  are  most  profitable.  This 
evaluation,  however,  postulates  knowledge  of  all  culture. 
Such  knowledge  is  not  merely  beyond  attainment,  but 
beyond  aspiration.  "I  have  taken,"  said  Bacon,  "all. 
learning  as  my  province."  No  philosopher  could  say  that 
to-day.  At  most,  he  says  that  since  the  human  soul  works 
in  one  way  in  a  certain  subject,  it  must  work  in  the  same 
way  in  all  other  subjects  of  the  same  type.  His  problem 
is  now  simplified  ;  and  he  must  inquire  only  as  to  the 
number  of  types  of  subjects  and  exercises,  and  as  to  the 
method  of  the  soul  in  each  particular  type  of  subject  or 


384      MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

exercise.  Since  the  highest  ideal  of  education  is  to  attain 
health  of  mind  and  of  body,  and  since  health  is  an  ever- 
present  need  and  desideratum,  every  exercise,  study, 
method,  device,  apparatus,  and  programme  must  be  eval- 
uated in  its  terms.  Health  lost  is  death,  and  health  being 
lost  is  disease.  Therefore,  every  tendency  toward  disease 
must  be  corrected,  and  every  temptation  to  it  avoided. 
Similarly,  since  wisdom  is  an  ideal  of  education,  prior  to 
health  and  essential  to  it,  and  since  wisdom,  which  flowers 
in  philosophy,  is  an  ever-present  need  and  desideratum, 
only  less  important  than  health,  every  study,  exercise, 
apparatus,  recreation,  and  interest  must  be  evaluated  in 
its  terms.  Wisdom  is  relative  to  tasks  and  opportun- 
ities. We  have  seen  many  a  man  a  sage  in  a  village  and 
a  fool  in  a  city ;  careful  with  dollars,  spendthrift  with 
thousands ;  a  good  son,  a  bad  father ;  clever  in  conversa- 
tion, absurd  in  oratory ;  loyal  as  a  citizen,  traitor  as  a 
ruler ;  useful  as  a  private,  dangerous  as  a  general ;  com- 
petent as  clerk  or  salesman  or  mechanic,  but  soon  bank- 
rupt as  an  employer ;  a  gratifying  success  as  a  student, 
but  a  total  failure  as  professor  or  author  or  educator. 
Our  American  notion  and  custom,  to  promote  to  ever- 
larger  fields,  has  wrecked  many  a  promising  life.  The 
right  of  seniority  to  the  more  difficult  "  higher  "  task  is 
only  presumptive,  not  prescriptive.  It  is  a  conclusion  of 
sound  psychology  that  talent  for  great  enterprises  de- 
velops fast  and  is  therefore  recognizable  early  in  life,  that 
no  man  can  be  too  wise  for  his  task,  and  that  only  those 
with  sufficient  surplus  of  talent  succeed  upon  promotion. 
This  conclusion  becomes  a  principle  in  the  making  of 
courses  of  study  and  of  programmes.  Similarly,  since 
art  and  science  are  ideals  of  education,  every  study 
must  be  evaluated  in  their  terms. 

We  must  not  allow  ourselves  to  imagine  that  there 
is  some  radical  difference  between  the  two  groups  of 
ideals,  —  intelligence,  efficiency,  morality,  and  science, 


MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    OF   SUBJECTS        385 

art,  philosophy.  Obviously,  the  first  three  are  qualities. 
Not  so  obviously  but  as  truly  the  second  three  are 
qualities,  as  also  are  health  and  holiness.  We  shall  not 
be  successful  in  evaluating  studies  and  exercises  until 
this  point  is  clear. 

Science,  Art,  and  Philosophy  are  not  contents,  materi- 
als, substantial  truths  or  facts,  but  qualities  of  mind.  A 
book  of  science  does  not  contain  science,  but  merely 
such  a  literary  or  pictorial  record  of  science  as  an  under-' 
standing  mind  can  interpret  and  an  efficient  mind  use. 
In  short,  the  science  in  the  book  or  for  that  matter  in 
the  laboratory  or  field  is  opaque,  dead,  useless.  Other- 
wise, we  could  make  any  man  a  scientist  by  giving  him 
books  or  tools.  Of  course,  we  know  that  this  is  utterly 
futile,  we  know  that  only  a  transforming  mind  can  con- 
vert facts  and  exposition  into  science.  Wherever  the 
scientist  goes,  there  goes  science,  which  is  nothing  more 
or  less  than  the  power  to  observe  accurately,  to  retain, 
to  collate,  to  organize,  to  relate,  and  to  understand  facts 
and  principles.  Science  is  a  method,  not  a  body  of  know- 
ledge. Every  fact  may  be  tested  only  to  fail,  every  prin- 
ciple likewise,  but  science  is  only  the  more  certain  and 
useful. 

Similarly,  wherever  the  artist  goes,  there  art  goes. 
This  also  is  method.  A  picture  is  not  art,  but  only  an  ex- 
ample, a  manifestation,  a  testimony  of  art.  Art-products 
waste  away  ;  but  the  arts  endure  when  the  people  con- 
tinue to  be  artists.  From  this  flows  many  a  conclusion 
for  the  discerning. 

And  similarly  there  is  no  philosophy  in  books,  though 
by  a  trope  of  speech  we  allow  ourselves  to  say  so.  But  we 
act  upon  the  contrary,  for  we  spend  much  time  and  some 
money  trying  to  pass  on  from  philosopher  to  philosopher 
the  living  word  of  philosophy.  Otherwise,  our  professors 
of  philosophy  should  resign  their  chairs  and  our  thinkers 
cease  their  expositions ;  and  we  should  direct  the  daily 


386       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

newspapers  to  reprint  Kant  and  Schopenhauer  and  Lotze 
and  Hall  from  time  to  time  and  to  print  such  new  philo- 
sophies as  seem  expedient,  that  even  the  running  man 
may  read  and  be  wise. 

Science,  Art,  Philosophy,  then,  are  mental  qualities, 
whose  development  is  a  motive  of  the  higher  education, 
that  is  to  say,  of  culture.1  The  notion  that  some  special 
or  concrete  science  or  art  or  philosophy  is  to  be  ac- 
quired savors  of  sectarian  theology,  completely  mistakes 
the  catholic,  the  universal,  nature  of  science,  art,  and 
philosophy,  and,  if  followed  out,  ends  in  the  cul  de  sac 
of  authority.  Via  that  route  is  neither  progress  nor  free- 
dom, but  only  finality,  which  is  the  death  of  the  mind. 

That  every  study  must  be  evaluated  in  the  terms  of 
morality,  of  efficiency,  and  of  intelligence  has  long  been 
agreed  as  a  matter  of  common  sense.  But  such  evalua- 
tions have  been  few  and  casual. 

Observation  is  the  pathway  to  Intelligence.  Not  to 
observe  is  the  familiar  pitiable  condition  of  the  intel- 
lectual idiot,  the  absolutely  confined,  private  mind.  To 
observation,  Nature-study,  geography,  industrial  art  con- 
tribute freely.  In  observing,  we  must  measure  and  count : 
to  measuring,  geometry  contributes,  and  counting  is  the 
beginning  of  arithmetic.  Very  small  children  of  normal 
mind  are  keen  observers.  At  five  or  six  years  of  age 
may  properly  begin  for  brief  periods  daily,  but  without 
periodic  certainty,  the  formal  training  of  the  powers  of 
observation.  The  fit  materials  are  Nature,  Art,  and 
Number.  But  regimentation  should  not  begin  so  early. 
Children  of  five  years  of  age  should  not  be  required  to 
go  at  a  fixed  hour  daily  five  days  in  the  week  to  school, 
with  a  fixed  programme  for  forty  weeks  in  the  year. 
This  is  no  child's  garden,  but  the  chain-gang  drill,  which 

1  "  The  standards  of  truth  and  the  methods  for  its  discovery  must  be 
revealed  in  and  by  the  process  of  education."  Butler,  The  Meaning  of 
Education,  p.  183. 


MOTIVES   AND  VALUES    OF   SUBJECTS        387 

by  interfering  with  the  irregular  processes  of  the  phys- 
ical life  of  the  child  must  stunt  his-  body  and  stultify  his 
mind.  It  does  not  follow  that  the  kindergarten  should 
be  open  but  every  other  day  in  the  week,  or  for  mornings 
only.  It  does  not  follow  that  no  child  should  attend  for 
three  or  four  hours  daily,  for  (say)  an  average  of  four 
days  in  the  week  and  for  forty  weeks  in  the  year.  But 
it  does  follow  that  no  child  should  be  required  to  be 
regular  in  attendance  or  to  stay  in  the  kindergarten  five, 
three,  or  one  hour  after  he  comes.  The  entire  value  of 
observation-lessons  at  five  or  six  years  of  age  depends 
upon  the  interest  aroused  and  upon  their  not  affecting 
unfavorably  the  physical  life.  Such  lessons  may  develop 
oases  in  the  desert  of  the  childish  mind.  But  drill  and 
regularity  are  likely  to  sweep  the  sands  of  the  desert 
over  every  oasis. 

An  intelligence,  quickened  and  informed  by  observa- 
tion, is  ready  to  short-circuit  the  road  to  knowledge  by 
studying  the  records  of  facts  in  words ;  but  is  not  ready 
until  so  quickened  and  informed  ;  and  if  it  is  to  remain 
quick  and  substantial,  it  must  constantly  observe  through- 
out life.  The  motive  in  Nature-study  is  to  acquire  and 
to  keep  vital  the  sense  of  reality,  which  the  babe  does 
not  possess  at  birth.  To  the  infant,  the  world  is 
"  Maya,"  illusion.  Under  normal  conditions,  the  normal 
infant  removes  to  the  gates  of  Paradise,  but  not  beyond, 
at  three  or  four  years  of  age.  The  boy  and  the  girl 
pass  beyond  the  gates  in  adolescence  or  in  early  matur- 
ity, if  ever.  By  virtue,  they  may  keep  the  gates  always 
open  for  return  at  will.  The  great  restorative  of  the 
illusion  is  literature,  and  this  is  also  the  great  inter- 
pretative of  reality.  The  man  who  spends  his  life  with 
books  loses  the  sense  of  that  reality  which  books  can 
only  interpret.  The  mind  is  quickened  and  informed  by 
reading  for  its  own  sake,  and  by  reading  for  the  sake  of 
the  content  to  be  acquired,  —  geography,  arithmetic, 


388      MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

spelling,  history,  grammar,  science.  The  reading  itself 
exercises  the  powers  of  observation  and  of  memory,  and 
the  content  read  exercises  the  powers  of  imagination,  of 
apperception,  of  appreciation,  of  judgment,  and  of  reason. 
It  prepares  for  and  is  usually  closely  followed  by  such 
motor-activities  as  reading  aloud,  spelling  orally  or  in 
writing,  recitations  and  compositions  in  history,  grammar, 
and  science.  These  are  not  pure  motor-activities,  such 
as  manual  training  and  drawing,  and  therefore  do  not 
appeal  so  powerfully  to  the  efficiency  latent  or  patent 
and  potent  in  children. 

The  babe  begins  to  observe  soon  after  birth,  and  at 
the  same  time  begins  to  act.  By  his  acts,  he  learns 
himself  in  respect  to  his  body.  Action  is  the  beginning 
of  efficiency.  Before  work  is  play  ;  and  after  the  work 
there  should  be  play  again.  Not  to  be  able  to  act,  though 
able  to  observe,  is  the  state  of  the  imbecile.  The  soul 
needs  to  express  itself  in  deeds,  in  things,  —  that  is,  in 
services  and  in  production.  Here  enter  games,  "busy 
work,"  plays,  saying,  reading,  and  writing  words,  garden- 
making,  tool-using.  How  the  day  of  the  six-year-old 
child  should  be  spent  in  school,  if  at  school  at  all,  is  al- 
ready answered  in  thousands  of  schools  with  too  great 
formality  for  me  to  add  to  the  prescription.  But  a  few 
things  appear  certain.  Only  the  exceptionally  strong  and 
aggressive  child  should  go  to  school,  whether  this  be 
kindergarten  or  not,  with  any  regularity;  and  none 
should  go  daily  for  weeks  at  a  time.  Compulsory  attend- 
ance for  children  under  nine  is  sinful,  and  every  law  for 
its  enforcement  daily  is  sure  to  ruin  the  generation 
victimized  by  it.1  Again,  the  spirit  of  the  kindergarten 
should  prevail  in  every  class  until  the  children  are  nine 

1  The  statement  that  "a  child  of  six  is  better  off  at  school  than  at  home 
when  the  home  is  poverty-stricken  "  may  be  true :  but  this  does  not  save 
the  child ;  nor  does  it  save  civilization  from  its  sin  that  any  mother  can 
be  "  poverty-stricken." 


MOTIVES   AND   VALUES   OF   SUBJECTS        389 

or  ten  years  of  age.  There  are  two  ideals,  —  intelligence 
through  observation,  reading,  and  expression  in  language, 
and  efficiency  through  action  and  service,  of  which  the 
first  should  control  until  the  tenth  year  of  age. 

"  No  impression  without  expression  "  was  once  the 
watchword  of  progressive  pedagogy  :  we  know  now  that 
this  was  a  catchword,  deceptive  and  false  to  true  psycho- 
logy. In  larger  terms,  we  know  that  we  may  say  truth- 
fully that  there  is  much  intelligence  without  efficiency, 
but  not  the  converse.  Forever  this  sequence  holds  true  : 

Intelligence  ]>  Efficiency  >  Morality. 

Unfortunately,  in  our  schools  we  have  given  too  little 
attention  to  the  middle  term.  The  motive  in  all  recita- 
tions, exercises,  games,  compositions,  products  is  not  to 
inform  or  even  to  develop  the  intellect,  and  certainly 
not  to  get  visible,  measurable  results,  and  by  all  means 
not  to  restrain  and  to  destroy  the  will,  but  to  give  it  out- 
let, to  develop  and  to  strengthen  it.  This  motive,  once 
understood,  must  transform  many  of  the  practices  now 
common  in  American  schooling,  which  term  in  truth 
has  become  offensive  to  many  of  the  discerning,  chiefly 
because  of  its  confinement  and  devolution  of  the  will. 
There  is,  of  course,  a  certain  restriction  of  the  will  that 
is  merely  direction  of  it  and  richly  profitable ;  but 
among  such  profitable  modes  of  direction  should  not  be 
included  imprisoning  children  for  hours  at  a  stretch  in 
straitjacket  school-desks,  drills  upon  forms  and  modes 
after  the  content  has  been  maste'red  and  reasonable  facil- 
ity secured,  and  similar  triumphs  of  the  ignorant  parsi- 
mony of  adults  over  the  natural  exuberant  vigor  of 
children. 

In  the  sixth  year  of  the  child's  age,  the  star  of  an- 
other and  third  ideal  has  appeared  above  the  horizon, 
morality.  The  little  boy  and  girl  at  school  are  trying  to 
learn  how  to  live  in  society.  It  is  true  that  they  have 


390       MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

already  learned  how  to  live  fairly  well  in  the  family  where 
morality  begins  in  reverence  and  duty  to  parents  and  in 
kindness  to  brothers  and  sisters  ;  but  this  family  moral- 
ity is  not  self-conscious,  while  school-morality,  in  order  to 
be  moral  at  all,  must  be  to  at  least  a  slight  degree  intro- 
spective and  self-understanding.  The  morality  of  pre- 
cept is  of  but  little  value ;  only  the  morality  of  experience 
enlightened  by  that  consideration  of  the  self-conscious 
soul  which  we  call  conscience  is  able  to  carry  itself  well 
in  the  conflicts  of  the  world,  in  even  the  little  conflicts 
of  the  school-world  of  the  child.  Morality  begins,  then, 
with  thoughtfulness  regarding  one's  duties  and  relations 
to  the  world  of  Nature  and  of  humanity.  All  this  world 
is  symbolized,  in  its  mystery  and  in  its  certainty  alike, 
by  the  idea  of  God.  From  the  autocracy  of  the  mother 
or  father  in  the  home  to  the  hierarchy  of  the  school  is 
a  difficult  transition  for  the  child.  Combined  as  it  is  with 
the  discovery  of  a  world  of  strangers,  the  transition 
often  presents  situations  that  baffle  the  little  child.  Al- 
ready, however,  he  has  learned  not  only  to  obey  but  also 
"to  try  to  be  good,"  which  is  the  efficient  motive  in 
all  morality.  This  motive  of  the  will  necessitates  also 
the  intellectual  effort  to  understand  what  is  good  and  the 
emotional  appreciation  of  the  good.  Not  to  rise  to  this 
motive,  not  to  be  evolved  sufficiently  to  will  the  good, 
is  arrest  of  development  in  moral  idiocy,  a  condition 
unfortunately  too  often  to  be  diagnosed  in  our  people 
to-day  to  warrant  contentment  with  American  morals. 
To  go  out  from  the  home  into  the  school  is  for  the 
child  the  discovery  of  a  new  world  of  morals,  whose  two 
great  virtues  are  obedience  to  teachers  and  honor  among 
mates.  The  obedience  to  teachers  may  develop  into  im- 
personal duty  to  laws  and  ordinances  ;  and  the  loyalty 
to  comrades  may  develop  into  social  morality.  As  the 
years  pass,  the  child  grows  into  the  youth  by  absorbing 
the  life  of  others  into  his  own  thought  and  by  directing 


MOTIVES   AND   VALUES   OF   SUBJECTS         391 

his  own  conduct  in  relation  to  others.  All  the  morality 
thus  acquired  is  practical  ;  but  the  opportunity  of  "the 
child  in  school  does  not  end  with  efficient  morality  but 
extends  to  theoretical  morals. 

Faithfulness  in  study,  deliberate  attention  to  instruc- 
tion, persistent  exclusion  of  the  outside  interests  of  the 
moment  and  of  other  occasions  and  relations  :  these  are 
matters  not  so  much  of  the  intellect  or  even  of  the  heart 
as  of  the  will.  To  think  as  directed  at  school  is  a  moral 
duty.  In  this  sense,  he  who  learns  to  obey  thereby 
learns  to  command,  for  such  obedience  is  self-command 
without  which  to  command  others  is  impossible.  There 
is,  then,  a  moral  principle  that  constitutes  a  true  school 
motive,  —  the  will  must  restrain  itself  sufficiently  to  wait 
for  the  light  and  then  to  follow  it. 

Shut  within  a  room  entirely  dark  and  silent,  with  every 
wall,  the  ceiling,  and  the  floor  black,  one  is  thrown  upon 
one's  self ;  it  is  a  moment  of  mystery  and  searching.  A  spot 
of  light  appears,  a  sound  is  heard  :  how  infallibly  the  eye 
fixes  upon  the  light  and  will  not  be  drawn  away  and  the  ear 
fixes  upon  the  sound  and  cannot  exclude  it.  As  certainly  as 
light  commands  the  eye,  which  is  made  to  see  light  and  for 
nothing  else,  and  as  sound  commands  the  ear,  which  is  made 
to  hear  sound  and  for  nothing  else,  so  certainly  does  the  right 
command  the  will,  the  good  the  heart,  the  true  the  intellect. 
But  we  know  what  light  and  sound  are  ?  and  we  cannot  know 
what  the  right,  the  good,  and  the  true  are  ?  Who  knows  the 
essence  and  the  cause  of  light  or  of  sound  ?  Verily,  even  in 
the  twentieth  century  in  America,  "  we  see  as  through  a  glass 
darkly,"  and  we  do  not  yet  know  what  seeing  really  is. 

By  study  and  reading  and  information  at  school,  the 
opportunity  is  afforded  to  learn  in  the  concrete  manners, 
customs,  laws,  and  morals.  Literature,  history,  and  geo- 
graphy are  the  typical  media  for  conveying  these  facts. 
The  child  or  youth  learns  what  the  world  is,  what  it 
contains,  what  it  expresses.  This  "  world  "  changes  from 


392       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

generation  to  generation  and  from  land  to  land,  for  it  is 
a  thing  of  a  particular  space  and  of  a  particular  time 
and  of  the  particular  person  who  sees  it  and  of  the  par- 
ticular mood  in  which  he  is  at  the  time  when  he  sees  it. 
One  motive,  then,  and  a  very  important  motive  of  these 
several  school  studies,  is  to  learn  morality  of  one's  own 
times. 

In  this  view,  correct  spelling  is  a  moral  duty.  Both  in 
its  content  and  in  its  method,  arithmetic  teaches  right 
and  wrong.  Legible  handwriting  becomes  a  moral  obli- 
gation as  certainly  as  rapid  handwriting  is  evidence  of 
efficiency. 

The  ascent  to  complete  education  may  be  likened  to 
a  spiral  stairway,  lit  by  the  lamps  of  seven  ideals,  —  in- 
telligence, efficiency,  morality,  science,  art,  philosophy, 
holiness.  Of  these  lamps,  three  light  the  first  cycle  of 
the  pathway,  —  Intelligence,  Efficiency,  and  Morality,  — 
and  three  light  the  second  cycle,  —  Science,  Art,  and  Phil- 
osophy. Far  above  Intelligence,  yet  directly  above  it, 
shines  the  manyfold  brighter  light  of  Science ;  above  Effi- 
ciency shines  Art ;  and  above  Morality,  Philosophy.  Few 
may  breathe  the  high  mountain  air  of  the  second  cycle. 

The  traveler  up  the  ascent  has  always  the  light  of 
three  stars  to  guide  his  steps.  In  the  kindergarten,  In- 
telligence shines  full  upon  him ;  but  he  sees  also  the 
rays  of  Efficiency  and  of  Morality.  It  is  the  age  of  versa- 
tility, of  flitting  about.  To  see,  to  know,  to  understand 
is  the  master  motive.  Play  leads  to  anticipations  in  which 
the  imagination  exults.  At  ten  or  twelve  years  of  age, 
Efficiency  shines  in  the  zenith,  bright  as  the  sun.  It  is 
the  age  of  drill  and  habituation  for  accuracy,  for  effort, 
and  for  facility.  The  motive  should  be  a  passion  for  skill. 
The  will  takes  pride  in  its  own  voluntary  subjection  to 
habits.  Self-control,  won  thereby,  is  the  apotheosis  of 
will,  as  wisdom  is  of  intellect.  Sixteen  is  the  typical  age 
of  Morality.  The  soul  has  blossomed  into  life  in  the  sun- 


MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    OF   SUBJECTS        393 

shine  of  society.  God  is  discovered,  and  duty  universal- 
izes what  has  hitherto  been  but  obedience  to  special 
persons  and  their  orders  and  rules.  Mere  Intelligence 
has  ceased  to  be  a  desideratum  ;  but  the  star  of  Science 
shines  upon  the  wider  horizon.  At  twenty,  the  youth  has 
risen  to  the  levels  of  Science  and  has  the  visions  of  Art. 
Age  now  tells  nothing  exactly.  At  twenty-five,  even  ear- 
lier, the  foregleams  of  Philosophy  may  be  shining  ;  yet 
the  ascent  to  the  high  levels  of  Philosophy  is  usually  but 
slowly  won.  To  here  and  there  one  in  a  land,  to  now  and 
then  one  in  an  age,  it  is  given  to  know  holiness  ;  but  the 
white  star  of  this  ideal  shines  for  many  who  may  see  it 
only  afar  off.  Figures  of  speech  fail ;  concrete  language 
fails  ;  general  abstract  terms  fail ;  and  the  very  thought 
of  man  fails  to  express  clearly  the  hope  of  perfection. 
As  for  the  method,  who  is  there  that  knows  it  ?  In  the 
merciful  providence  of  the  God  of  all  worlds,  man  has 
been  granted  a  vision  beyond  his  farthest  reach,  to  lead 
him  on,  forever  on.  It  may  well  be  that  whole  worlds  of 
experience  —  new  senses,  new  powers  of  mind,  alto- 
gether new  tools  and  objects  —  are  provided  in  life  after 
life ;  and  there  are  times  when  it  appears  that  this  must 
be  so.  As  the  child's  dream  of  manhood,  so  may  be 
man's  dream  of  holiness,  —  for  saints  and  other  holy  men 
have  accounted  themselves  the  most  unworthy. 

Upon  this  presentation,  the  motives  and  values  of  the 
conventional  studies  and  exercises  in  education  and  cul- 
ture reveal  themselves  with  unwonted  simplicity  and 
clearness.  Certain  criticisms  suggest  themselves.  The 
atmosphere  becomes  more  free,  the  light  grows  stronger, 
the  view  widens.  Utilities  find  their  places.  Something 
of  new  meaning  confronts  us  ;  and  we  are  awakened  out 
of  our  traditions.  It  is  an  old  world  in  a  new  guise.  And 
yet  there  is  really  nothing  new  here.  Philosophy  has  no 
new  discoveries.  It  but  harvests  and  markets  the  products 
of  other  efforts  ;  if  possible,  of  all  effort. 


394       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

Why  educate  ?  That  the  pupil  in  the  school  may  at- 
tain intelligence,  efficiency,  morality,  science,  art,  philo- 
sophy, health,  and  holiness.  Why  ?  Because  these  are 
the  successively  higher  manifestations  of  life ;  and  life 
alone  warrants  itself,  is  its  own  justification.  Moreover, 
life  is  its  own  method,  and  to  him  that  hath  life  is  given 
yet  more  life.  How,  then,  shall  we  educate  ?  By  setting 
before  ourselves  and  our  children,  in  order,  the  oppor- 
tunities and  materials  of  life ;  by  confronting  ourselves 
and  them  with  the  necessity  of  exerting  their  powers  of 
life.  The  school  and  college  do  this  in  orderly  fashion  : 
education  therein  is  formal.  In  the  world  it  is  informal, 
save  in  so  far  as  personal  genetic  physical  and  psychical 
change  and  growth  formulates  the  education  of  every 
man  whether  he  goes  to  school  in  his  youth  or  not.  The 
school  is  tempted  to  claim  a  great  deal  that  mere  growth 
gives. 

The  conventional  studies  and  exercises  and  the  studies 
and  exercises  that  should  be  pursued  are  not  the  same. 
A  study  pursued  by  one  method  differs  greatly  from  the 
same  study  pursued  by  a  decidedly  different  method. 
Apparently  belonging  in  the  field  of  pedagogy,  these 
two  matters  are  of  vital  interest  in  educational  philosophy 
and  concern  us  here.  We  may  believe  that  the  chief 
end  of  education  is  utilitarian  :  that  the  youth  may  earn 
a  livelihood  and  support  a  family,  that  certain  truth  and 
skill  may  endure  in  the  world,  or  that  the  nation  shall 
have  a  sufficiency  of  workers  to  maintain  its  life.  Or  we 
may  believe  that  the  chief  end  of  education  is  to  educate, 
that  the  youth  shall  have  the  most  abundant  life.  We 
sometimes  call  this  end  cultural,  but  it  is  not  that :  rather 
it  is  something  that  may  be  properly  styled  only  an  end- 
in-itself,  for  it  recognizes  that  the  youth  is  his  own  end 
now  and  must  forever  be  his  own  end.  Life  is  self- 
sufficient,  its  own  justification  ;  and  the  value  of  each 
individual  life  depends  upon  the  degree  and  measure  and 


MOTIVES   AND   VALUES   OF   SUBJECTS        395 

quality  in  which  it  is  life.  One  generation  is  as  sacred 
as  another ;  posterity  is  not  nobler  than  ourselves,  nor 
less  noble.  The  entire  chain  partakes,  link  by  link,  of 
the  divine  metal  of  which  it  is  made  and  of  the  divine 
fire  by  which  it  is  shaped  and  welded. 

By  utility,  we  measure  the  conventional  studies  until 
there  dawns  upon  our  minds  the  sun  of  the  eternal  truth 
that  we  exist  not  for  purposes  but  for  life  itself.  In  the 
light  of  this  truth,  we  make  new  measurements,  to  dis- 
cover that  we  must  fashion  once  more  the  formal  educa- 
tion of  our  youth. 

The  same  general  argument  holds  in  respect  to  the 
methods  of  our  various  studies  and  exercises.  The  old 
school  ideals — to  read  loudly  and  briskly,  to  cipher 
accurately  and  rapidly,  to  write  legibly  and  handsomely, 
to  sing  enthusiastically  in  chorus,  to  draw  true  outlines 
in  black  and  white,  to  parse  correctly,  to  declaim  set 
pieces  unabashed,  to  know  the  hundred  dates  of  Ameri- 
can history  and  the  thousand  places  of  world-geography, 
to  be  punctual,  persevering,  regular,  and  obedient,  and 
perhaps  later  to  learn  Latin,  algebra,  physics,  rhetoric, 
world-history,  and  similar  desiderata,  ideals  unfortunately 
attained  by  but  a  small  portion  of  school  attendants  — 
are  seen  to  reflect  particular  traditions  and  aspirations 
not  organized  into  a  philosophy  and  essentially  incapable 
of  reduction  to  scientific  order,  relation,  and  system.  Sub- 
jected to  our  analysis,  not  one  of  them  rises  higher  than 
the  plane  of  science,  and  most  of  them  are  upon  the 
lower  levels  of  intelligence  and  efficiency.  These  ideals 
are  not  untrue  but  inadequate.  Not  one  of  them  has  the 
abstract  dignity  of  art  and  of  philosophy,  but  all  are 
weighted  with  the  concrete.  A  motive  in  each  is  the 
desire  to  appear  well  in  the  social  world,  and  the  value 
of  success  is  to  be  well  thought  of.  In  this  aspect,  edu- 
cation is  information  to  dress  the  naked  soul.  It  is  not 
strange,  therefore,  that  many  a  man  and  woman,  well 


396      MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

educated  in  these  respects,  has  seemed  but  a  shadow 
when  measured  against  some  solid  native  soul  from  the 
unschooled  back  country. 

The  true  method  for  any  and  every  study  and  exer- 
cise is  of  the  same  nature  as  the  standard  by  which 
the  content  of  the  philosophically  acceptable  studies  is 
measured  and  approved.  Content  and  method  are  for  the 
development  of  the  soul  stage  by  stage  in  intelligence, 
in  efficiency,  in  morality,  in  science,  in  art,  in  philosophy, 
in  health  and  holiness.  Consequently,  the  true  method 
is  psychological ;  being  also  logical  in  respect  to  the  sub- 
ject  or  content  only  in  so  far  as  that  material  is  itself 
truly  psychological  in  its  facts,  forms,  and  order.  Fantas- 
tic subjects  and  exercises,  that  evade  or  defy  psycho- 
logy, do  not  belong,  are  not  in  any  sense  permissible,  in 
formal  education.  And  this  is  equally  true  of  fantastic 
methods  and  devices. 

A  method  is  always  a  way  through,  a  highway  (P.CTO. 
6Sds).  It  implies  a  straight  road  that  reaches  some  goal. 
It  may  be  defined  as  a  line  of  orderly  procedure  to  reach 
an  end.  Says  Kant  in  the  "  Critique  of  Pure  Reason," 
"Method  is  procedure  according  to  principle."  It  is  a 
universal  procedure,  —  one  for  companions,  one  for  all 
men.  Method  is  truth  presented  in  its  own  fit  clarity. 
Strictly  considered,  "  true  "  or  "  sound  method "  is 
a  tautological  phrase  ;  and  false  or  "  unsound  method  " 
is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  The  teacher  who  has  no 
method  or  so-called  "  false  methods  "  cannot  educate ; 
and  a  body  of  knowledge  or  of  practices  not  yet  sub- 
jected to  methodological  criticism  and  organization  is  out 
of  place  in  any  educational  curriculum,  which  should  in- 
clude only  sciences,  arts,  and  philosophy.  Methodology 
is  simply  a  phase  of  psychology.  A  method  is  always 
psychological. 

Yet  from  various  causes  pseudo-methods  abound  in 
numberand  in  injuriousness  beyond  the  limits  of  this  book 


MOTIVES   AND   VALUES   OF   SUBJECTS        397 

to  record.  They  tend  to  destroy  themselves,  and,  though 
constantly  replaced,  are  individually  but  short-lived.  A 
genuine  science,  art,  or  philosophy  infolds  a  true  method  ; 
and  its  method  expresses  its  content  of  truth.  The  his- 
torical culture  of  mankind  already  includes  an  ampli- 
tude of  methodized  subjects  for  use  in  formal  education. 
For  the  purposes  of  systematic  information  and  disci- 
pline, the  School  and  the  College  suffer  from  a  profusion 
of  scientific,  aesthetic,  and  philosophical  riches.  He  who 
knows  a  few  perfect  tools  is  an  artist  far  superior  in  his 
achievements  to  one  who  uses  many  tools  unskillfully. 
Too  many  tools  are  confusing. 

The  science  of  language  is  grammar,  its  art  rhetoric. 
Magical  language,  expressing  truth,  beauty,  goodness, 
wisdom,  in  the  "  necessary  words,"  to  quote  the  phrase  of 
Kipling,  is  literature.  Language  and  literature, — that 
is,  grammar  and  rhetoric,  in  themselves,  and  truth, 
beauty,  and  goodness  expressed  in  the  modes  and  forms 
of  grammar  and  rhetoric,  constitute  the  most  important 
tools  in  education.  The  chief  output  of  the  human  mind, 
they  are  its  largest  expression.  In  its  highest  form,  the 
art  of  poetry,  literature  becomes  a  medium  of  philosophy 
and  of  religion.  Mastery  of  language  and  familiarity 
with  literature,  indissolubly  one,  is  the  first  essential,  the 
typical  and  most  prominent  formal  and  objectively  appar- 
ent characteristic  of  a  well-educated  person.  Of  all  the 
subjects  used  in  systematic  education,  language  and  liter- 
ature, giving  content  to  the  mind  and  voice  to  the  soul, 
afford  the  widest  range  of  material.  They  feed  the  intel- 
ligence of  the  child,  stir  him  to  efficiency,  instruct  and 
discipline  him  in  morals.  They  are  the  medium  for  the 
propaganda  of  science;  the  indispensable  mode  and  form 
for  receiving  and  giving  forth  the  products  of  the  arts  of 
oratory,  poetry,  prose,  allying  themselves  to  music  with 
almost  perfect  intimacy ;  and  reservoir  and  conduit  of 
every  kind  of  spiritual  truth.  It  may  not  be  said  at  what 


398 

stage  language  and  literature  most  closely  knit  them- 
selves to  education  ;  but  it  may  be  said  that  they  are  too 
much  neglected  at  every  stage,  for  neither  is  that  child 
advanced  in  intelligence  who  cannot  read  and  talk  well 
nor  is  that  adult  scholar  wise  who  despises  the  art  of 
expressing  thought  in  words. 

The  motive  for  the  study  of  language,  oral  and  writ- 
ten, is  the  desire  to  enter  into  the  real,  substantial, 
spiritual  life  of  humanity,  to  know  the  divine  in  man,  to 
feel  and  to  express  the  soul.  The  unlettered  child  gazes 
at  the  printed  word  and  feels  that  it  conceals  yet  adver- 
tises a  world  at  once  mysterious  to  himself  and  precious 
to  his  elders ;  and  altogether  infinitely  desirable,  as  in- 
deed it  is.  In  his  earliest  infancy,  he  had  listened  with 
equal  eagerness  to  the  sounds  of  human  voices.  In  his 
latest  age,  his  last  conscious  desire  is  the  desire  to  know 
the  meaning  of  words,  to  find  the  .thought  that  others 
are  expressing  in  them,  and  to  express  his  own  thought. 
He  who  acquires  words  afterwards  thinks  in  them  for- 
ever. They  are  the  links  of  thought. 

In  importance  the  sound  of  words  far  exceeds  their 
appearance  in  letters,  written  or  printed.  Phonics  concern 
not  merely  the  child  in  his  effort  to  pronounce  words, 
to  associate  their  signs  with  their  sounds  ;  they  con- 
cern also  every  one  who  converses,  who  writes  prose, 
who  composes  verse,  and  who  reads  prose  and  verse. 
Our  insensitiveness  to  the  power  and  charm  of  good 
language,  in  particular  of  good  English,  is  due  largely 
to  deafness  to  phonics,  which  in  turn  is  due  to  our 
neglect  of  reading,  conversation,  and  oratorical  com- 
position as  arts,  the  supreme  arts  by  which  men  relate 
themselves  in  thought  to  one  another.  The  length, 
breadth,  force,  and  tone  of  the  vowels,  the  sharpness, 
smoothness,  and  intensity  of  the  consonants,  the  coales- 
cence of  diphthongs,  alliteration,  and  rhyme,  meter  and 
scansion,  rate  and  variety  of  movement  of  syllables,  of 


MOTIVES  AND   VALUES    OF   SUBJECTS        399 

words,  of  phrases,  of  clauses,  of  sentences,  and  of  para- 
graphs, are  one  and  all  matters  of  no  small  concern  to 
those  who  would  convey  and  receive  thought  in  its 
purity. 

This  thesis  requires  no  demonstration.  Two  men 
may  speak  the  same  truth  with  equal  logic ;  but  if  one 
be  an  artist  in  phonics  and  the  other  not,  we  listen  to 
the  first  alone.  In  their  degrees,  all  men  are  skillful  or 
ignorant  in  making  and  in  hearing  the  music  of  words. 
To  Milton  in  poetry  and  to  Webster  in  oratory,  language 
was  of  organ-tones  :  to  Shakespeare,  it  was  orchestral. 
In  Whitman,  we  hear  the  booming  of  the  drum,  in 
Wendell  Phillips  and  in  Tennyson  the  melody  of  the 
violin.  In  this  poetic  passage,  the  words  by  their  sounds 
suggest  time  and  travel,  — 

"  Across  birth's  hidden  harbour  Bar, 
Past  youth  where  shoreward  shallows  are, 

Through  age  that  drives  on  toward  the  red 
Vast  void  of  sunset  hailed  from  far, 

To  the  equal  waters  of  the  dead ; 
Save  his  own  soul  he  hath  no  star, 

And  sinks,  except  his  own  soul  guide, 

Helmless  in  middle  turn  of  tide.  " l 

Contrast  with  these  soothing  lines,  expressing  per- 
fectly the  democracy  of  death,  the  individualism  of  life, 
the  shocking  sound  of  the  speech  of  the  wanton  man- 
in-the-street  who  declares,  "  We  Ve  got  to  go  it  alone 
through  life.  It 's  all  the  same  in  death  for  the  man 
who  made  good  and  for  the  man  who  welched."  The 
poet  sings,  the  uncouth  philosopher  screeches.  Each  mes- 
sage has  the  same  weight  and  is  apparently  of  the  same 
value :  but  examined,  the  one  is  gold,  the  other  brass. 
Our  own  poet  Lowell  was  characteristically  too  much  in 
earnest  to  pause  for  choosing  the  perfect  word,  and  failed, 

1  Swinburne,  Songs  before  Sunrise,  p.  7. 


400       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

therefore,  to  attain  the  heights  of  supreme  art  in  verse. 
The  famous  lines 

"  New  occasions   teach  new  duties  ;   Time  makes  ancient  good 

uncouth ; 
They  must  upward  still,  and  onward,  who  would  keep  abreast  of 

Truth," 

are  cacophonous  with  their  difficult  vowels  and  numerous 
dentals  and  sibilants.  Keats,  Poe,  Tennyson,  or  Swinburne 
loved  their  art  too  well  to  pass  such  lines.1 

In  language,  we  are  concerned  not  only  with  the 
phonics  but  also  with  the  associations  of  words.  The 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  has  been  styled  the 
magna  carta  of  our  liberties.  This  means  something  to 
one  who  knows  American  history,  colonial  and  national : 
but  it  means  vastly  more,  intensely  more  to.  one  who 
knows  English,  mediaeval,  and  Roman  history  and  law 
and  comparative  politics,  because  the  words  constitution, 
state,  charter,  liberty  are  keys  to  rich  storehouses  of 
knowledge.  The  artist  in  words  knows  how  by  choosing 
the  right  word  to  suggest  outlines  and  colors  for  pictures 
to  be  composed  by  the  imagination  of  the  reader.  The 
power  of  words  is  partly  the  power  of  their  sounds, 
partly  the  weight  of  history  and  literature  that  they 
carry.  What  reader  of  the  "  Scarlet  Letter "  can  ever 
again  see  that  branded  letter  without  thinking  of  Arthur 
Dimmesdale  and  of  Hester  ?  As  Emerson  and  Trench 
and  many  others  have  pointed  out,  a  word  is  often  a 
poem,  an  immortal  product  of  the  creative  imagination. 

1  Among  several  famous  passages  that  challenge  the  world  for  supreme 
beauty,  this  may  well  be  quoted :  — 

"  It  was  the  lark,  the  herald  of  the  morn, 
No  nightingale  :  look,  love,  what  envious  streaks 
Do  lace  the  severing  clouds  in  yonder  east : 
Night's  candles  are  burnt  out,  and  jocund  day 
Stands  tiptoe  on  the  misty  mountain  tops." 

Shakespeare,  Romeo  and  Juliet,  iii,  v. 


MOTIVES   AND   VALUES   OF   SUBJECTS        401 

The  very  word  "  poem  "  is  itself  an  island  in  the  cur- 
rent of  historical  philology. 

And  there  is  a  fitness  of  the  word  to  the  idea  that  is 
apart  from  its  phonics,  from  its  historical  and  literary 
associations,  and  from  its  philology.  The  power  to  fit 
words  to  ideas  is  the  hallmark  of  genius;  it  immortalizes 
men ;  it  decides  the  crises  of  nations ;  it  is  the  soul  of 
literature.  The  fit  word  delights  every  one;  it  is  so 
obvious,  after  it  has  been  discovered  and  attached  to 
the  idea.  The  skill  that  finds  this  word  seems  a  special 
gift  of  God :  fiat  lux.  And  we  stand  and  marvel  at  the 
sudden  shining  of  the  light. 

Grammar  is  to  language  what  the  intellect  is  to  man. 
The  motive  for  the  study  of  grammar  is  a  subordinate 
mode  of  the  motive  for  the  study  of  language  and  of 
literature.  It  is  the  desire  to  follow  the  process  by  which 
one's  fellow  men  express  themselves  in  language  and  to 
acquire  skill  in  expressing  one's  self  so  accurately  as  to 
be  understood  by  them  with  certainty.  It  is  a  social  con- 
vention to  call  a  particular  kind  of  objects  "food "and 
a  particular  kind  of  action  "giving;"  but  it  is  necessary 
to  follow  these  conventions  in  order  to  be  understood 
when  one  says  or  hears,  "  the  good  man  gives  food  to  the 
hungry  without  asking  whether  or  not  they  deserve  to 
be  hungry."  1  Similarly,  it  is  social  convention  of  several 
centuries  that  has  constituted  such  a  succession  of  words 
as  grammar.  To  defy,  to  ignore,  and  not  to  know  the 
conventions  or  principles  of  grammar  are  respectively 
immoral,  insolent,  and  unfortunate. 

The  study  of  grammar  belongs  at  a  definite  stage  in 
the  process  of  formal  education.  The  ungrammatical 
may  be  intelligent  and  somewhat  efficient ;  but  they 
may  never  be  wholly  moral  in  the  broadest  sense  of 
that  term.  They  can  never  be,  in  any  ordinary  under- 
standing of  the  term,  scientific.  The  age  devoted  to  the 

1  Jesus,  Matthew,  Gospel,  vii,  I  ;  xxv,  31-46. 


402      MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

development  of  efficiency  and  morality  is  from  ten  to  six- 
teen ;  and  it  is  in  the  latter  half  of  this  period  that  the 
systematic  study  of  grammar  properly  belongs.  Because 
grammar  is  a  science, —  a  science  indispensable  to  all 
other  sciences,  since  we  must  think  in  words,  if  we  are 
to  cover  much  ground, —  its  study  should  be  continued 
into  the  scientific  period  after  sixteen  years  of  age. 

Higher  than  the  science  of  grammar  are  the  arts  of 
rhetoric  and  poetry.  To  these,  few  ever  attain.  The  imi- 
tative impulses  of  human  youth  often  suggest  the  writing 
of  essays,  of  stories,  and  of  verses,  and  the  effort  of 
public  debate ;  but  it  is  not  difficult  to  discern  whether 
the  product  is  or  is  not  the  preface  to  genuine  art.  The 
child  or  youth  with  the  capacity  to  become  an  artist  in 
words  will  set  his  own  exercises  and  revise  them  for  his 
own  satisfaction  :  he  will  display  initiative  and  conscience. 
For,  in  truth,  there  is  nothing  more  false  than  to  suppose 
that  the  motive  of  the  literary  art  is  self-exhibition. 
After  that  regeneration  into  the  poetic  artist,  which 
Sterling  pronounced  necessary  to  the  completion  of  the 
born  poet,1  he  may  desire  that  his  expressed  art-product 
be  highly  valued  by  his  fellow  men  (for  even  Art  is  hu- 
man) ;  but  no  true  artist  ever  produced  a  work  primarily 
that  it  might  be  seen  of  men, —  wherein  Art  manifests 
the  modesty  of  religion.  In  its  essence,  every  work  of 
Art  is  self-caused:  the  great  poem  must  be  sung;  the 
perfect  statue  must  be  carved ;  a  living  idea  seeks  a  body 
and  form  in  every  art-product. 

By  art,  the  seed  of  an  idea  quickens  into  beauty. 

Language,  however,  serves  mankind  beyond  the  ranges 
of  science  and  of  art.  Wherever  thought  moves,  there 
language  seeks  to  move,  for  it  is  "  the  picture  and 
counterpart  of  thought,"  as  Mark  Hopkins  declared.2 
Without  language,  philosophy  itself  were  not  merely 

1  Essays  and  Tales  :   TJtcnights  and  Images. 

2  Williston  Seminary,  Speech,  1841. 


MOTIVES   AND   VALUES   OF  SUBJECTS         4°3 

dumb,  but  must  halt  in  painful  vagueness  and  isolation 
in  the  mind  of  each  several  philosopher.  Deprived 
of  history  and  of  conference,  philosophy  would  wither 
and  die.  Poetry  tries  language  sorely,  hammers  and 
exhausts  it,  finally  compels  it  to  shelter  and  enthrone 
truth  in  beauty  ;  but  Philosophy  does  more.  Philosophy 
requires  language  to  image  shadowy  ideas  and  distant 
ideals,  to  run  as  swiftly  and  as  surely  as  reason  itself, 
and  to  deliver  at  the  goal  every  part  of  the  strange 
message.  Fossil,  crystal,  mechanic,  traditional,  final, 
though  language  apparently  is,  Philosophy  asks  of  it  the 
flexibility,  resourcefulness,  vitality  of  living  thought. 
And  language  wins  its  greatest  victory  in  becoming  the 
medium  of  that  highest  literature,  which  is  Philosophy. 
In  endeavoring  to  express  the  supreme  ideal  of  mankind, 
language  fails.  Words  cannot  deliver  or  contain  the  full 
meaning  of  the  revelation  of  righteousness,  holiness, 
freedom,  health,  genius,  perfection.  By  acts,  Jesus  ex- 
presses that  ideal  in  love,  which  is  the  nature  of  God. 
For  all  the  beatitudes  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  the 
Gospel  was  told  not  in  words,  but  upon  Calvary. 

By  language,  we  must  understand  all  language,  not  only 
our  native  tongue.  Indeed,  it  is  by  a  variety  of  languages,  and 
similarly  in  a  variety  of  literatures,  that  man  discovers  his 
larger  self  in  many  individuals  and  societies,  ancient  and 
modern,  neighboring  and  remote.  The  motive  is  removal  to 
a  different  point  of  view ;  and  the  values  are  two :  that  one 
learns  new,  different,  and  often  strange  facts,  principles,  and 
sentiments,  and  thereby  enlarges  himself  ;  and  that  one  com- 
pares the  old  and  the  new,  correlates  ideas,  cross-sections 
life,  and  thereby  reviews  and  corrects  himself.  One  ancient 
language,  Latin,  and  one  foreign  language,  German,  mastered 
in  their  literatures,  fill,  develop,  enlarge,  and  re-create  the 
mind  not  by  addition  merely,  not  even  as  it  were  by  multi- 
plication, but  by  a  subtle  geometrical  progression.  Not  sur- 
prising, therefore,  is  polyglottism,  when  Greek  follows  Latin 


404      MOTIVES   AND   VALUES   IN   EDUCATION 

and  Hebrew  Greek,  and  French  follows  German,  and  Spanish, 
Italian,  Russian  follow  French.  If  their  literatures  justified  it, 
tens  of  thousands  to-day  would  be  studying  Japanese  and 
Chinese.  For  the  permanence  of  Occidental  morality,  it  is  well 
that  Oriental  literatures  are  formal,  superficial,  artificial,  and 
monotonous. 

In  educational  value,  the  mathematics  are  only  less 
important  than  the  languages.  Number,  which  counts 
things,  is  an  indispensable  tool  of  the  active  intelligence, 
—  a  tool  used  almost  as  early  as  the  noun,  which  names 
things.  The  operation  of  numbers  promotes  efficiency. 
Arithmetic  with  its  system  of  commercial  and  industrial 
applications  is  a  highroad  through  the  maze  of  social 
morals.  Algebra,  geometry,  trigonometry,  calculus,  qua- 
ternions, dynamics,  mechanics,  statistics,  and  their  cor- 
relates and  extensions  are  the  very  forms  of  science  and 
the  modes  of  Art.  And  mathematics  ends  by  founding 
in  Philosophy  the  certitude  that  man  seeks  in  the  flux 
and  illusion  of  spatial,  temporal,  and  sequential  affairs. 
As  Descartes  and  Kant  showed,  mathematics  is  the 
irov  O-TW  of  metaphysics. 

Therefore,  in  a  scientific  age  that  seriously  tries  to 
evaluate  and  to  utilize  most  advantageously  the  intellect- 
ual and  moral  resources  of  mankind,  it  is  not  strange  that 
in  government,  in  business,  in  education,  the  place  of 
mathematics  steadily  grows.  Essentially  one  of  the  sci- 
ences, it  is  so  much  more  important  than  any  other  as  to 
be  classified  apart  popularly  from  all  the  others.  Because 
as  a  science  it  is  the  basis  of  many  others,  such  as  physics 
and  astronomy,  in  formal  instruction  we  approach  it  first 
as  a  highroad  into  all  science ;  but  we  fail  to  note  that 
the  desirableness  of  a  special  kind  of  knowledge  and 
the  feasibility  of  attaining  it  are  by  no  means  synchronous 
in  psychical  genetics.  All  education  since  its  beginning 
has  gone  astray,  and  most  education  for  centuries  to  come 
will  go  astray,  wandering  far  from  the  path  that  with 


MOTIVES   AND   VALUES   OF   SUBJECTS        405 

certainty  leads  to  perfection,  wandering  into  sloughs  and 
quicksands  and  upon  barren  hillsides,  and  losing  most  of 
the  wanderers  because  of  ignorance  of  the  genetic  order  of 
mental  functions.  The  nascent  period  of  interest  in  the 
science  of  mathematics  is  not  so  early  as  most  courses 
of  study  subsume.  In  childhood,  we  may  learn  many 
items  of  mathematics  and  drill  ourselves  in  many  pro- 
cesses; but  the  science  and  the  art  belong  to  youth. 
The  information  and  the  processes  are  matters  of  in- 
telligence, efficiency,  morality,  for  want  of  which  many 
a  man  has  served  time  in  jail  and  penitentiary  and 
many  times  more  become  parasite  or  vagabond ;  but  the 
science  and  the  art  are  not  the  avenues  of  approach  for 
mathematics,  but  goals  not  visible  before  fourteen  or 
fifteen  years  of  age.  For  want  of  understanding  this 
principle,  school-children  are  set  to  work  upon  a  special 
division  of  mathematics,  the  science  of  arithmetic,  when 
they  should  be  working  on  the  elementary  factors  of  all 
mathematics,  which  are  number,  magnitude,  mechanical 
computation,  observation,  and  invention.  Indeed,  our 
position  in  respect  to  the  mathematics  of  the  elementary 
school  has  been  the  illogical  one  of  anticipating  method 
before  we  have  a  content,  and  of  anticipating  science  and 
art  before  we  have  facts  and  processes. 

In  mathematics,  like  children,  we  have  expected  re- 
sults before  inaugurating  causes.  Before  the  brain  con- 
volutions were  entirely  formed  and  long  before  the  brain 
tissue  has  developed  its  organization,  we  have  expected 
perfect  habits  of  observing,  of  measuring,  of  computing, 
and  of  recording.  We  have  supposed  that  efficiency 
comes  forward  pari passu  with  intelligence,  as  though 
whatever  one  understands  one  can  do  !  We  have  in- 
sisted that  correct  figuring  is  a  matter  of  morality,  as  it 
is,  indeed,  but  only  for  those  capable  of  uniformly  cor- 
rect figuring  or,  in  other  words,  not  for  young  children. 
Intimidated  by  the  commercial  forces  that  now  rule 


406      MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

Western  civilization  and  will  ruin  it,  unless  successfully 
resisted  soon,  educators  attempt  the  impossible  and  in 
the  attempt  destroy  the  material  upon  which  they  work. 
Fortunately,  Western  civilization  is  not  uniformly  and 
perfectly  accomplished  everywhere  in  Europe  and  the 
Americas,  and  also,  fortunately,  childhood  itself  some- 
times successfully  resists  ;  but  "  dropping  out  of  school," 
the  sad  death-roll  of  education,  is  not  the  recovery  of 
freedom  to  grow  in  the  way  Nature  intends,  but  renun- 
ciation of  the  hope  of  attaining  culture  in  the  way  man 
should  intend  for  all. 

The  motive  for  the  study  of  mathematics  is  insight 
into  the  nature  of  the  universe.  Stars  and  strata,  heat 
and  electricity,  the  laws  and  processes  of  becoming  and 
of  being,  incorporate  mathematical  truths.  If  language 
imitates  the  voice  of  the  Creator,  revealing  His  heart, 
mathematics  discloses  His  intellect,  repeating  the  story 
of  how  things  came  into  being.  And  the  value  of  math- 
ematics, appealing  as  it  does  to  our  energy  and  to  our 
honor,  to  our  desire  to  know  the  truth  and  thereby  to 
live  as  of  right  in  the  household  of  God,  is  that  it  estab- 
lishes us  in  larger  and  larger  certainties.  As  literature 
develops  emotion,  understanding,  and  sympathy,  so  math- 
ematics develops  observation,  imagination,  the  reason. 

What  is  history  ?  According  to  our  answer,  its  place 
in  education  is  fixed.  Is  it,  as  its  philology  suggests, 
truth  determined  by  investigation  ? l  Is  it  a  fable  cun- 
ningly agreed  upon,  as  Voltaire  said  ?  Is  it  philosophy 
teaching  by  examples,  as  Dionysius  held  ?  Is  it  a  pag- 
eant, as  Birrell  would  have  us  believe  ? 2  Is  it  a  record  of 
progress,  as  proposed  by  German  philosophers,  —  in  par- 
ticular, of  freedom,  as  Hegel  endeavored  to  show?  Was 
Carlyle  right  in  calling  biography  "  the  only  true  his- 
tory "  ?  Was  Gibbon  partly  blind  when  he  pronounced  it 
"  little  more  than  the  register  of  the  crimes,  follies,  and 

a  learning  by  inquiry.        2  Obiter  Dicta,  ii :  Muse  of  History. 


MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    OF   SUBJECTS        407 

misfortunes  of  mankind  "  ?  Is  it  a  science,  as  a  modern 
school  of  historians  would  have  us  think  ?  Is  it,  as 
Macaulay  declared,  "a  compound  of  poetry  and  philo- 
sophy "  ? *  Shelley  called  it  "  a  cyclic  poem."2  Freeman 
asserted  that  it  is  "past  politics."  Seeley  says  it  is  a 
"residuum"  after  all  the  sciences  have  been  abstracted 
from  the  total  of  human  knowledge.3  History  has  been 
styled  "a  thesaurus  of  the  facts  and  opinions  of  the 
past,"  "  a  record  of  events  that  have  affected  the  gen- 
eral welfare,"  4  "  an  interpretation  of  the  social  forces 
and  movements,"  5  "  a  probably  true  prose  narrative  of 
past  events,"  "  a  record  of  exceptional  phenomena,"  6  or 
"everything  that  Nature  is  not."  7 

Claimed  by  literature,  by  philosophy,  and  by  science, 
each  denying  the  claims  of  the  others,  history  is  in  some 
danger  of  being  accounted  but  the  rubbish-heap  of  the 
past,  the  debris  of  civilization.  From  Adams  who  pro- 
nounces it  "  the  highest  form  of  prose  literature  "  to  the 
scientific  school  in  Europe  and  in  America  that  proclaims 
it  an  accumulation  of  proven  facts  is  indeed  a  very  dif- 
ferent direction  from  that  by  which  we  reach  the  scorn- 
ers  who  reject  history  utterly  ;  but,  for  educational  pur- 
poses in  the  elementary  schools,  the  one  journey  is  as 
fatal  as  the  other.  If  history  is  a  science,  it  certainly 
does  not  belong  in  courses  for  children  under  fifteen 
years  of  age.  If  it  is  cunning  fable,  it  belongs  nowhere 
in  education  or  in  culture.  "The  past,"  however,  says 
Lord  Acton,  "  burdens,  but  knowledge  of  the  past  eman- 
cipates, us."8  As  a  matter  of  common  sense,  we  are 
likely  to  agree  that  history  is  not  science,  but  a  record 

1  Essays  :  Hallant's  Constitutional  History, 

2  Also  Acton,  Study  of  History. 

3  Introduction  to  Political  Science. 

4  Chancellor,  The  United  States :  A  History,  vol.  i. 

6  Mace,  Method  in  History.  6  Ward,  Applied  Sociology,  p.  234. 

7  Droysen,  Principles  of  History  (translated  by  Andrews). 

8  Study  of  History,  p.  17. 


4o8       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

and  an  interpretation  of  the  materials  of  many  sciences. 
One  who  has  read  Thucydides,  Tacitus,  Gibbon,  Macau- 
lay,  and  Parkman  is  not  likely  to  dispute  the  proposition 
that  the  best  history  is  at  least  fair  literature. 

Accepting  these  debatable  premises,  educators  are 
likely  to  find  a  place  in  the  school  curriculum  for  history, 
with  literature  upon  one  side  and  geography  upon  the 
other.  But  this  place,  let  it  be  clearly  understood,  is  for 
history  as  a  systematic  literary  account  of  the  past  of 
mankind  upon  earth,  not  for  history  as  a  science  and  not 
for  it  as  a  polemic,  a  fable,  or  a  collection  of  ollapodrida. 
Three  principles  that  must  be  regarded  in  every  method 
of  history  teaching  are  the  time-perspective,  the  sequence 
of  events,  especially  cause,  crisis  (issue),  and  result,  and 
the  milieu  (environment,  atmosphere,  circumstance). 
The  foci  of  interest  for  children  in  history  are  biography 
and  action,  and  the  ellipse  evolved  is  drama  or  epic. 

In  the  light  of  this  discussion,  it  becomes  clear  that 
with  history  as  such  children  have  no  concern  until  so- 
cial morality  begins  to  mean  something  to  them.  It  is 
an  advanced  grammar-grade  study  for  children  not  under 
thirteen  years  of  age.  The  locus  of  real  history  is  far 
above  Morality,  Science,  and  even  Art,  for  history  needs 
the  light  of  Philosophy,  and  its  method  is  not  syllogistic 
or  inductive  or  aesthetic,  but  dialectic,  and  its  concern  is 
with  all  the  life  of  all  mankind.  More  near  the  truth 
is  it  to  say  that  history  is  at  once  a  science,  an  art,  and 
a  philosophy ;  in  other  words,  literature  of  the  highest 
kind,  that  is  derived  from  a  science  as  exact  as  the  ma- 
terials permit  to  an  art  limited  in  its  activity  and  range 
only  by  conviction  of  the  truth,  an  art  without  fiction, 
portraying  fact  to  its  best  advantage. 

"  History  is  Humanity's  knowledge  of  itself,  its  cer- 
tainty about  itself,  a  search  for  light  and  truth,  a  ser- 
mon thereupon,  and  a  consecration  thereto."  *  But  this 

1  Droysen,  Principles  of  History,  p.  49. 


MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    OF   SUBJECTS        409 

consecration  is  not  purely  or  even  mainly  academic,  as  is 
that  of  philosophy,  but  it  is  practical,  manifesting  itself 
in  councils  of  politics,  in  the  battles  on  land  and  sea,  in 
the  factories  and  upon  the  farms  of  industry, —  wherever 
men  congregate  and,  by  colliding,  produce  events. 

The  ego  of  the  individual  is  poor,  indeed ;  history  is 
the  way  of  escape  out  of  that  poverty.  Whether  we 
mean  by  history  the  real  action  in  the  material  world  or 
the  written  record,  the  historical  motive  is  the  same, 
to  achieve  oneness  with  humanity.  The  values  of  histor- 
ical studies  for  those  able  to  pursue  them  with  under- 
standing are  two,  — history  lifts  to  ever  wider  horizons, 
and  history  persuades  to  action,  while  equipping  the 
actor  with  wisdom  how  and  when  to  act. 

The  data  of  the  sciences  may  interest  and  concern  the 
child ;  but  the  sciences  themselves  only  frighten  and 
worry  him.  Certain  great  intuitions,  Space,  Time,  and 
Unvaried  Sequence  ("  Cause  and  Effect "),  he  may  sus- 
pect or  even  discover;  but  their  manifoldness,  their  pos- 
sibilities of  discrete  content,  and  their  nature  are  beyond 
his  vision.  Ideas  familiar  as  the  light  of  common  day  to 
mature  philosophers  are  not  credible  to  him,  not  com- 
prehensible, not  visible,  not  conceivable,  not  even  pos- 
sible. This  is  not  merely  because  the  intermediating 
words  are  outside  of  his  vocabulary,  not  merely  because 
his  sensations  and  cognitions  are  not  yet  the  themes  of 
his  reflection,  but  it  is  because  as  yet  he  does  not  reflect, 
does  not  even  construct  in  his  imagination,  and  does  not 
pause  to  inhibit  and  to  consider.  His  sensational  and 
emotional  experiences  proceed  in  constant  succession 
without  breaks,  and  thus  fill  his  mind,  overflow  it,  indeed. 
No  day  is  so  long  as  the  day  of  the  child ;  no  man  sees 
and  "thinks,"  desires  and  feels,  so  many  things.  His 
mind,  could  an  adult  see  it,  would  appear  to  be  a  chaos 
of  business  with  accidental  and  not  logical  results.  Simi- 
larly, the  mind  of  the  trained  and  educated  adult  would 


410      MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

appear  to  the  child  a  mesh  of  tracks  and  signals,  a  be- 
wilderment of  mechanisms.  As  a  garden  run  wild  com- 
pares with  a  closely  built  city  of  streets  and  houses,  so 
does  the  childish  mind  compare  with  the  adult ;  the 
one  teems  and  booms  with  life,  the  other  is  packed  and 
agitated  with  things. 

In  a  certain  sense,  order  is  the  badge  of  senility,  in  that 
when  one  no  longer  generates  ideas  in  profusion,  he  has 
time  and  feels  an  interest  to  husband  the  ideas  that  he 
has.  Virile  youth  is  too  busy  to  fall  a  prey  to  habits.  To 
the  logical  man  of  talents,  matured  and  trained,  all 
genius,  whether  of  childhood  or  of  manhood,  appears 
dissipated,  accidental,  irrational,  unnecessary,  natural, 
without  merit,  and  perilous  to  itself  and  dangerous  to 
others,  because  genius  is  childishly  profuse  and  careless. 
There  are  two  kinds  of  precocity :  one  is  early  senil- 
ity, the  other  is  genius,  and  both  threaten  an  untimely 
doom. 

From  all  these  considerations,  one  seems  compelled  to 
conclude  that  the  sciences  as  such  are  not  for  the  ele- 
mentary school  years.  But  equally  it  follows  that  child- 
hood has  a  right  to  the  materials  of  all  the  sciences.  The 
birthplace  and  early  home  of  every  child  should  be  in  or 
near  the  open  country, —  field,  forest,  valley,  wood,  sky, 
air,  water,  birds,  stones,  flowers,  beasts,  bugs,  sounds, 
smells,  running,  swimming,  playing,  hunting,  fishing, 
working  belong  to  childhood  of  immemorial  right,  nay,  of 
everlasting  right,  since  living  creatures,  our  ancestors,  first 
moved  upon  the  lands  or  in  the  waters  of  the  earth.  The 
civilization  of  the  city  is  a  modern,  shameless,  unnoticed, 
malignant  fraud  upon  childhood ;  seen  in  its  true  light, 
persisted  in  after  its  recognition  as  a  fraud,  the  city  ap- 
pears malicious  and  dangerous.  The  city  has  properly 
three  functions  and  three  only  :  as  exchange  of  goods,  as 
treasury  of  the  arts,  and  as  headquarters  of  government. 
Every  other  function  of  man  in  society  —  rearing  of 


MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    OF   SUBJECTS        411 

children,  worship,  education,  manufacture,  mining  —  be- 
longs in  the  village  or  in  the  open  country.  History  is 
a  panorama  that  displays  the  destruction  of  peoples  by 
their  swarming  in  cities  where  the  soul  and  the  flesh  of 
childhood  bleach  out,  and  where  men  and  women  fall 
afoul  of  one  another  and  perish  at  once  from  luxury  and 
from  poverty,  from  crowding  and  from  solitude,  from 
overwork  and  from  want  of  work.  Of  course,  the  city  is 
not  entirely  bad ;  but  the  greater  it  is,  the  worse  it  is, 
from  which  one  may  not  fail  to  see  the  conclusion. 
Twenty-two  run  together  :  it  is  football.  A  million  :  and 
it  is  stampede  and  slaughter. 

For  the  child  of  the  city,  a  mimic  reproduction,  a  mu- 
seum collection  of  the  products  of  field  and  forest  and 
shore,  is  as  essential  as  are  playground  and  gymnasium. 
These  materials  must  furnish  the  data  for  all  the  sciences 
to  come  later,  — for  physics,  chemistry,  botany,  zoology, 
biology,  physiology,  hygiene,  anatomy,  histology,  ecology, 
entomology,  anthropology,  ethnology,  mineralogy,  geo- 
logy, meteorology,  astronomy,  physiography,  domestic 
and  political  economics,  sociology,  philology,  govern- 
ment, statistics.  Such  a  museum,  as  it  were,  may  be 
afforded  in  connection  with  so-called  Nature-study,  with 
the  pseudo-science  of  geography,  and  with  the  various 
subjects  included  in  manual  training.  It  must  be  no 
drawerful  of  things,  or  mere  cabinet  collection  or  wall 
decoration  for  assembly  room  or  for  hallway ;  but  an 
ever-changing,  ever-growing,  constantly  overflowing  ac- 
cumulation of  every  manner  of  things  "  animal,  mineral, 
and  vegetable."  1 

1  This  will  cost  money?  Probably.  In  1905,  cigars  cost  American  men 
$300,000,000 ;  all  forms  of  tobacco,  $745,000,000.  Pianos  cost  $50,000,000. 
Alcoholic  drinks  cost  $1,550,000,000.  School-books  for  17,500,000  pupils 
cost  $12,000,000;  school  supplies,  $6,000,000.  The  army  and  navy  cost 
$185,000,000,  not  including  pensions,  — $145,000,000  more.  All  forms  of 
public  and  private  education  cost  $290,000,000. 


4i2       MOTIVES  AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

The  motive  for  the  study  of  the  things  of  the  real 
world,  the  data  of  science,  is  to  know  into  what  environ- 
ment one  has  come  "  out  of  the  everywhere  into  the 
here."  Incidentally,  such  knowledge  has  two  values :  it 
promotes  skill  in  self-preservation ;  and  it  lays  founda- 
tions for  later  science.  But  its  substantial  value  is  in 
itself,  for  knowledge  is,  indeed,  the  furniture  of  the  mind, 
which  without  knowledge  is  the  bare  habitation  of  every 
echoing,  turbulent,  destructive  instinct  and  passion  from 
all  past  ages.  As  Froude  said,  "  Ignorance  is  the  do- 
minion of  absurdity."  l 

Of  the  arts,  their  in  appropriateness  in  the  formal 
education  of  children  is  even  more  apparent  than  is  the 
inappropriateness  of  the  sciences.  Our  conclusion  will  be 
the  same  whether  we  accept  the  opinion  of  Mill  that  Art  is 
based  upon  Science,  or  the  more  common  opinion  of  such 
as  Karslake  that  Science  is  higher  than  Art.  Said  Mill, 
"Art  necessarily  presupposes  knowledge.  In  any  but  its 
infant  state,  Art  presupposes  scientific  knowledge :  and 
if  every  art  does  not  bear  the  name  of  a  science,  it  is  only 
because  several  sciences  are  often  necessary  to  form  the 
groundwork  of  a  single  art." 2  Such  an  opinion,  of  course, 
subsumes  certain  definitions  of  Science  and  of  Art.  Mill 
had  in  mind  clearly  two  grades  of  Art,  for  he  expressed 
the  dialectic  that  what  Art  does,  Science  collates  and  in- 
terprets, and  then  Art  (higher  Art,  true  Art),  mastering 
the  interpretation,  produces  with  certainty.  And  he 
declared  that  Art  selects  for  its  rules  the  theorems  of 
Science.  The  order  of  the  rules  of  Art  is  by  no  means 
the  order  of  the  theorems  of  Science,  for  their  use  is 
entirely  different.  In  the  reason  for  the  difference  in 
their  order  lies  the  superiority  of  Art  to  Science.  Art 
aims  to  produce  perfection,  to  improve  Nature,  to  create 
particular  things  that  suggest  universal  principles.  Art 

1  Short  Studies :  Party  Politics . 

8  John  Stuart  Mill,  System  of  Logic,  Introduction. 


MOTIVES   AND   VALUES   OF   SUBJECTS        413 

is  objective  in  its  motive,  subjective  in  its  method. 
Science  aims  to  derive  from  given  particulars  universal 
laws,  to  discover  Nature,  to  know  the  imperfect.  Science 
is  subjective  in  its  motive,  desiring  its  own  completeness, 
but  objective  in  its  method,  living  in  the  external  world 
of  reality.  As  self-direction  is  higher  than  self-conscious- 
ness, which  is  the  highest  reach  of  the  highest  science, 
psychology,  so  Art  is  higher  than  Science.  But  the  Art 
of  which  this  is  true  is  not  the  mere  art  of  doing. 

There  are  many  arts, —  the  fine  arts,  the  applied  arts, 
the  mechanic  arts,  we  say,  but  appropriate  terms  of 
grouping  and  of  classification  soon  fail.  We  may  group 
the  sciences  as  exact,  e.  g.  mathematics;  as  physical, 
e.  g.  chemistry ;  and  as  natural,  e.  g.  biology ;  and  feel 
that  the  grouping  is  fairly  satisfactory.1  But  so  much 
more  elaborate  are  the  arts  than  the  sciences,  and  so 
much  more  numerous,  that  any  grouping  simple  enough 
to  serve  a  philosophical  purpose  is  not  distinct  and  com- 
plete enough  to  be  absolutely  true.  In  the  manifoldness 
of  modern  civilization,  the  arts  are  multiplied.  In  music, 
which  is  itself  an  art,  there  are  many  coordinate  arts, 
as  of  singing,  of  song-writing,  of  composition,  of  orches- 
tration, of  playing  upon  violin,  upon  flute,  upon  the 
organ ;  in  painting,  there  are  several  arts  ;  sculpture 
likewise  ;  literature  has  poetry  and  prose,  and  both  poetry 
and  prose  have  several  arts  ;  statesmanship  is  an  art, 
concerned  with  many  particular  arts,  public  and  private  ; 
and  teaching,  learning  ;  dancing,  swimming  ;  carpentry, 
iron-working,  farming,  gardening,  tree-growing ;  preach- 
ing ;  journalism,  editing ;  telegraphy,  typewriting,  book- 
keeping ;  medicine,  surgery,  dentistry  —  these  all  are 
arts,  but  they  are  only  a  few  of  the  many  differing  arts. 

When  we  reflect  upon  the  sciences  and  upon  the  arts, 
and  consider  them  in  reference  to  ourselves  and  to  others, 
we  discover  an  important  fact :  that  no  scientist  and  no 

1.C£.  Duncan,  The  New  Knowledge  (asserting  the  atom  as  all  in  all). 


4H      MOTIVES   AND    VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

artist  in  these  times  comprehends  or  understands  or 
scarcely  appreciates  the  sum  totals  that  we  mean  by 
Science  and  by  Art.1  Living  humanity  does  not  contain 
them,  though  possessing  means  of  access  to  most  of  their 
truths  and  practices.  For  Science  and  Art  are  stored  in 
books,  in  things,  in  the  minds  of  millions  of  different  men. 
They  are  the  subject  of  oral  traditions  and  of  practical 
"object-lessons."  Humanity,  Science,  Art:  these  are 
too  varied  and  too  vast  to  take  form  and  body,  for  they 
suggest  the  infinite  and  the  eternal. 

With  the  arts  of  skillful  performance  of  definite 
exercises  the  elementary  school  is  concerned,  but  not 
with  the  art  that  is  founded  upon  a  science  or  upon 
several  sciences.  The  lower  and  lesser  arts  are  but  suc- 
cessful examples  of  attained  efficiency,  and  may  properly 
occupy  the  attention  of  boys  and  girls  before  they  are 
ten  years  old.  In  this  sense,  art  is  but  joining  together, 
as  its  philology  indicates.  The  limitations  of  success  in 
these  childish  efforts  to  draw,  to  sing,  to  play  the  violin, 
to  weave,  to  make  with  tools,  to  cook,  to  sew,  to  play 
games,  to  make  verses,  to  write  compositions  are  two. 
Of  these,  the  first  is  implicit,  if  not  fully  explicit,  in  this 
argument  :  the  incapacity  of  the  child  to  see  much  more 
than  the  special  matter  before  him  and  even  to  hold 
this  firmly  in  consciousness,  that  is,  his  incapacity  to  see 
a  thing  in  its  relations  and  therefore  to  know  its  value. 
A  child  may  see  truly,  but  seldom  sees  wholly.  The 
second  reason  is  that  the  realized  psychical  development 
of  the  child  but  reflects  his  physical  state,  which  is  still 
far  from  completion  and  perfection.  Nerves  and  mus- 
cles do  not  yet  coordinate;  the  very  cells  of  the  brain  do 
not  seem  as  yet  to  be  constituted  as  a  brain. 

The  physiologists  tell  us  what  our  common  experience 
confirms,  that  the  accessory  muscles  are  late  in  develop- 
ment and  still  later  in  control.  The  baby  can  walk  long 

1  Lotze,  Microcosmus,  ii,  318  et  scq. 


MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    OF   SUBJECTS        415 

before  he  can  roll  a  pin  between  thumb  and  forefinger. 
The  boy  kicks  a  big  football  successfully  years  before  he 
can  catch  the  small  baseball.  Years  before  he  can  write 
well  with  a  pen,  he  can  pull  an  oar  or  grub  with  a  hoe. 
The  eye  cannot  be  consistently  accurate  in  childhood. 
Thus,  all  the  physical  conditions  of  perfection  in  true 
art  are  wanting  in  childhood  ;  and  we  are  in  danger  of 
trying  to  force  an  anticipation  of  mature  skill  that  would 
wear  out  the  very  powers  necessary  to  its  development. 
Colors,  masses,  solids,  sounds,  tones,  directions,  forces, 
ideas,  words,  tools,  processes,  methods,  devices,  the  dis- 
crete data  of  the  arts,  we  indeed  can  teach  in  some 
measure  successfully.  Such  data  become  nuclei  of  mem- 
ory and  interest,  fountains  of  thought  in  the  wilderness 
of  childhood.  As  the  wild  profusion  of  childhood  dries 
and  dies  until  the  adult  mind  often  resembles  a  hot, 
windy  desert,  about  the  fountains  of  childish  interest 
and  skill  grow  the  life-saving  oases  of  true  art.  The  boy 
who  drew  pictures  becomes  the  painter  or  architect.  The 
girl  who  wrote  compositions  becomes  the  novelist.  It  is 
in  this  sense  that  "  genius,  wanting  art,"  is  "  forever 
dumb."1  And  it  is  in  discursive,  encyclopaedic  instruc- 
tion in  childhood  and  in  youth  in  respect  to  the  elements 
of  the  sciences  and  of  the  arts  that  the  hope  of  educat- 
ing the  great  genius  lies,  such  a  genius  as  conforms  to 
that  dictum  of  Ruskin  :  "  That  artist  is  greatest  who  has 
embodied,  in  the  sum  of  his  works,  the  greatest  number 
of  the  greatest  ideas."2  The  youth  whose  opportunities 
were  really  narrow  (not  merely  so  in  appearance)  can  by 
no  possibility  even  of  regeneration  grow  into  such  large- 
ness of  mind  and  of  soul  as  has  been  so  clearly  demon- 
strated in  the  case  of  William  Shakespeare.3  For  the  boy 
without  education  when  a  little  child  the  hope  is  of 

1  Longfellow,  Kavanagh,  ch.  20. 

2  Modern  Painters,  part  i,  §  i,  ch.  2. 

8  Halleck,  Education  of  the  Central  Nervous  System. 


4i$      MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

intensity  and  integrity  of  genius  rather  than  of  extension 
and  variety.  We  never  outgrow  our  own  childhood  un- 
less we  become  false  to  ourselves :  we  may  and  should 
grow  out  and  around,  above  and  beneath  it  :  our  true 
soul  centres  there. 

As  the  motive  of  Science  is  truthfulness,  for  the 
motive  of  its  substrate,  intelligence,  is  to  know  facts ;  so 
the  motive  of  Art  is  the  facile  and  skillful  production  of 
beauty,  aesthetic  sense  and  aesthetic  power,  artistry,  for 
the  motive  of  its  substrate,  efficiency,  is  power  to  do  or 
make  or  serve  well.  But  Science  and  Art  have  values 
beyond  the  personal,  values  social,  general,  universal, 
eternal.  They  are  the  media  by  which  mankind  is  com- 
ing into  humanness  and  divineness  :  it  is  our  faith  that 
in  Science  God  teaches  men  Truth,  and  in  Art,  Beauty. 
The  scientist  and  the  artist  transcend  their  individuality 
and  mortality  and  transmit  the  unseen  infinite  and 
eternal. 

Athletics,  gymnastics,  calisthenics,  dietetics,  hygiene, 
sanitation,  work  and  play  :  what  shall  we  call  all  these 
together  but  the  conditions  and  processes  of  health  ?  We 
realize,  all  of  us  to  a  man  realize,  that  health  is  the  most 
important  thing  in  life.  But  we  neglect  it,  we  even  ruth- 
lessly thrust  it  out  of  consideration.  Why  ?  Because  as 
wisdom  cannot  be  won  by  desire  or  conveyed  by  exhorta- 
tion, but  is  the  flower  of  a  lifetime,  so  health  in  civiliza- 
tion is  an  end,  not  a  means.  It  is,  however,  as  an  abso- 
lute, not  as  a  relative  term  that  we  so  regard  health.  An 
individual  may  be  conceived  as  ill,  as  able-to-be-about, 
and  as  well.  Normal  growth  from  infancy  to  maturity, 
increase  in  height,  in  weight,  in  energy,  in  control,  in 
activity,  improvement  in  certainty,  periodicity,  and  com- 
pleteness of  the  processes  of  'digestion,  nutrition,  excre- 
tion, sleep,  sex-functioning  after  puberty,  freedom  from 
avoidable  disease,  exemption  from  contact  with  dis- 
ease, progress  toward  perfect  health,  may  indeed  well  be 


MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    OF    SUBJECTS        417 

considered  as  concurrent  with  the  psychical  chain  repre- 
sented by  the  links,  Intelligence,  Efficiency,  Morality, 
Science,  Art,  Philosophy,  Holiness.  As  with  Science  and 
Art,  so  with  Health,  only  the  itemized  facts  are  con- 
ceivable and  usable  by  the  child.  Moreover,  as  in  their 
cases,  so  in  that  of  physical  culture,  there  is  always 
danger  of  exceeding  the  limits  of  childhood  and  of  youth 
and  thus  defeating  the  very  purpose  of  such  culture. 
Overdrill,  overexertion,  too  much  instruction  in  hygiene, 
and  too  complete  and  rigid  conformance  to  the  principles 
of  sanitation  in  schoolhouse  construction  and  in  school 
administration,  are,  however,  dangers  very  remote  from 
ordinary  public  education.  As  we  have  failed  to  discover 
and  to  develop  as  yet  a  psychology  of  habit  to  match  the 
psychology  of  function,  so  we  have  failed  to  discover  and 
to  develop  a  curriculum  for  the  body  to  match  that  for 
the  mind.  In  mental  education,  imitation  and  tradition 
avail  much,  because  we  learn  by  example  of  our  superiors 
and  from  the  successful  precepts  of  the  past ;  but  in  phys- 
ical education  we  must  deal  with  the  body  of  the  boy 
and  of  the  girl,  scientifically  diagnosing,  prognosing,  and 
prescribing  correctly,  or  we  must  not  deal  with  it  at  all. 
This  may  seem  mystery  and  paradox ;  but  it  is  truth, 
nevertheless.  "  It  is  so  easy  to  feel  that  our  knowledge 
of  the  material  world  is  simple,  and  our  knowledge  of 
moral  obligation  and  of  spiritual  life  a  mere  matter  of 
opinion ;  but  we  must  come  to  realize  just  the  reverse."  l 
Unlike  philosophy,  science  has  no  power  finally  to  solve 
difficulties :  it  merely  shifts  them  deeper  into  the  mys- 
tery. But  in  that  shifting,  it  performs  immense  services 
to  mankind,  which  may  be  temporary  and  individual  or 
permanent  and  general.  Why  God  permits  conditions  of 
poverty,  ignorance,  and  crowding,  in  which  some  infants 
are  born  ill  prepared  for  life,  and  other  infants  healthy  at 
birth  must  inevitably  deteriorate  into  anaemic,  crippled, 

1  Studies  in  Philosophy  and  Psychology :   Letter  from  Carman  to  Hall. 


4i8       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

consumptive,  and  otherwise  defective  youth,  science  can- 
not answer,  does  not  try  to  answer.  Science,  however, 
can  relieve  the  special  condition  of  the  individual  and 
can  show  how  to  reconstruct  society  so  that  the  immedi- 
ate causes  of  the  general  conditions  may  be  removed. 
But  the  ultimate  causes  of  poverty  itself,  which  are 
ignorance  and  fraud  and  precedent  poverty  (a  vicious 
circle,  indeed),  Science  cannot  remove,  does  not  even 
consider. 

Our  very  philosophy  as  regards  the  place  of  health  in 
life  and  in  education  is  at  fault,  as  I  have  tried  to  show 
elsewhere.  Not  only  do  we  look  upon  health  as  a  means 
to  the  end  of  success  in  life,  but  we  also  fail  to  regard  it 
as  highly  as  we  should ;  these  two  errors  are  essentially 
one.  For  health  is  not  a  means  at  all  but  an  end-in-itself, 
to  which  most  other  forces  and  events  in  life  are  but 
means.  When  we  have  exalted  health  into  the  end  that 
in  truth  it  is,  we  shall  be  ready  to  arrange  and  to  estab- 
lish in  education  the  means  by  which  it  may  be  secured. 

These  means  are  three :  intellectual  equipment  for 
economic  society  so  that  by  intelligent  and  efficient 
work,  either  as  producer  or  as  servant,  one  may  obtain 
the  necessaries  of  life ;  moral  training  so  that  one  may 
take  his  place  in  society  and  maintain  it  peacefully  ;  and 
physical  training  so  that  his  body  shall  be  strong,  serv- 
iceable, and  obedient.  These  means  suggest  the  three 
methods  to  be  followed  in  the  formal  system  of  educa- 
tion, in  which  they  become  not  ends-in-themselves  but 
intermediate  processes,  that  is,  educational  ends.  Such 
a  discussion  as  is  at  once  proposed  is  foreign  to  the  pur- 
pose of  this  book ;  and  it  suffices  to  remark  that  a  cur- 
riculum calculated  to  equip  youth  as  valuable  economic 
workers,  whose  comradeship  in  labor  is  acceptable  to 
their  fellow  workers  and  calculated  at  the  same  time  to 
develop  in  them  all  the  physical  energy  and  skill  of 
which  their  bodies  are  capable,  would  be  revolutionary, 


MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    OF    SUBJECTS         419 

because  it  would  be  radically  different  from  all  curricula 
now  indorsed  by  public  opinion. 

The  motive  for  the  serious,  systematic,  scientific  pur- 
suit of  health  is  beyond  not  only  the  conscience  but  also 
the  intelligence  of  most  men,  because  health  itself  as 
thus  conceived  is  beyond  their  opportunity  and  their 
attention.  He  who  labors  unremittingly  in  adult  life  for 
the  means  of  life  for  himself  and  his  dependents  must 
inhibit  thought  as  to  what  life  itself  is.  Seeking  to  save 
his  life,  he  is  losing  it.  Yet  he  must  seek  to  save  it, 
must  because  his  soul  is  part  and  parcel  of  the  human- 
ity that  brought  him  to  being  and  surrounds  and  sus- 
tains him.  He  must  stay  his  thought  of  the  meaning  of 
the  life,  lest  from  inattention  to  the  immediately  practical 
he  fail  therein  :  as,  indeed,  many  do  fail  and  perish.  In 
order  to  seek  the  meaning  of  life,  some  have  renounced 
society  :  such  as  Thoreau  and  Walt  Whitman.  Many  a 
vagabond  is  a  philosopher  gone  astray. 

The  true  motive  for  seeking  perfect  health,  whether 
by  honest  labor,  by  sufficient  rest,  by  intellectual  activ- 
ity, by  moral  discipline,  by  gymnastics,  athletics,  and 
dietetics,  by  surgical  remedy  of  malformations,  great  and 
small,  by  medical  cure  of  maladies,  by  renunciation  of  a 
noisy,  crowding,  unpitying  civilization,  by  deliberate  set- 
ting aside  the  inessentials  of  culture,  of  wealth,  and  of 
pleasure,  by  any  or  all  of  these,  is  always  the  emancipa- 
tion of  the  spirit  from  the  flesh.  One  who  is  perfectly 
well,  flawlessly  skillful  in  bodily  movement,  joyously  but 
calmly  performing  every  bodily  function,  who  takes  from 
the  physical  creature  everything  of  which  it  is  capable, 
never  was  and  is  never  like  to  be ;  but  did  such  an  one 
exist,  he  would  be  so  completely  master  of  his  body  that 
he  would  not  be  conscious  of  its  existence.  This  is 
health,  for  it  is  body  and  soul  working  as  one.  In  that 
co-working,  the  soul  would  by  its  very  nature  so  possess 
the  body  as  to  be  free  from  it. 


420       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

Of  such  health,  genuine  art,  the  very  spirit  of  art,  is 
the  essence,  for  health  is  the  nature  of  art,  which  ex- 
presses universals  in  the  various  visible,  audible,  sensu- 
ous forms  of  particulars.  Philosophy  is  the  method  of 
health,  for  philosophy  expresses  universals  in  the  forms 
cf  thought,  more  or  less  darkly  revealed  in  words.  Or- 
ganized by  philosophy,  which  rationalizes  religion,  health 
assumes  the  character  of  holiness,  whose  motive  is  real- 
ization of  sonship  to  God,  the  infinite  holy  One.  Upon 
this  vision,  formal  education  dares  not  look  face  to  face, 
but,  in  the  manner  of  Moses  of  old,  descends  from  the 
Mount  quickly  and  humbly.  For  no  man  knows  and 
manifests,  and  no  man  can  know  and  manifest  perfectly, 
the  way  to  salvation  and  the  life  of  entire  holiness.1 

Philosophy  has  a  lower  aim  and  a  lower  plane  than  true 
religion,  but  only  the  next  lower.  The  motive  for  the 
study  of  philosophy  is  to  organize  knowledge,  to  relate 
particulars  to  generals,  and  generals  to  universals,  and 
universals  to  one  truth  upon  which  all  turn;  and  like- 
wise to  organize  conduct,  to  relate  impulses  to  purposes, 
and  purposes  to  motives,  and  motives  to  the  one  char- 
acter in  which  all  consist.  Thus  philosophy  rationalizes 
thought  and  action.  And  religion  spiritualizes  such 
thought  and  action  so  that  in  a  state  of  holiness  reason 
and  practical  life  may  be  one. 

Part  and  parcel  of  a  sound  philosophy  of  conduct  is  the 
art  of  health,  which,  like  all  other  arts  in  civilization,  is 
based  upon  certain  sciences,  —  in  particular  physiology 
and  hygiene.  The  art  of  health,  moreover,  like  every 
other  great  art,  comprises  many  lesser  and  subordinate 
arts.  It  is,  indeed,  a  system  of  technics,  requiring  prac- 
tice continued  until  habits  are  formed  and  established, 
and  is  based  upon  knowledge  of  many  facts  and  prin- 
ciples,—  the  whole  utilized  intelligently  in  the  manage- 
ment of  a  particular  and,  therefore,  peculiar,  human 

1  Sterrett,  The  Freedom  of  Authority,  chapter  L 


MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    OF   SUBJECTS        421 

body.  Several  decades  ago  Spencer  said  that  few  seemed 
conscious  of  health  as  a  duty,  avoiding  disease  and 
invalidism  as  immoral.1  On  the  whole,  we  have  advanced 
since  then,  as  vital  statistics  show;  but  most  persons 
even  to-day  are  not  well,  and  few  are  as  strong,  as  full 
of  health,  as  expert  and  agile  as  they  might  well  have 
been.  The  very  weight  and  mass  of  civilization  seem 
opposed  to  producing  a  vigorous  humanity.  Human 
nature,  civilized,  seems  anti-natural.  The  city,  with  its 
sewers,  its  streets,  its  noises,  its  restlessness,  its  ambi- 
tions, anxieties,  overwork,  overplay,  and  accidents,  its 
sunlessness  and  crowding,  the  city  which  should  be  at 
best  only  the  occasional  resort  of  mankind,  the  scene 
of  a  week's  visit  for  recreation  of  mind  or  of  a 
month's  sojourn  for  transaction  of  business,  has  become 
the  fatal  theatre  of  man's  tragic  passions  for  excite- 
ment, for  society,  for  wealth,  and  for  power.  There 
is  land  enough  upon  which  children  might  grow  into 
manhood  and  womanhood  and  men  and  women  might 
grow  into  wholeness  of  life ;  but  no,  we  prefer  (and  we 
draw  our  very  laws  so  that  we  are  compelled  to  accept) 
the  white  blight  of  the  city  to  the  ruddy  health  of  the 
fields,  —  we,  that  is,  the  ruling  and  suffering  third  of  us 
who  dwell  in  cities.  And,  out  in  the  roomy  open  lands, 
too  many  of  the  rest  of  us  imitate  in  our  houses,  in  our 
dress,  in  our  amusements,  in  our  worship,  in  our  educa- 
tion, the  manners,  the  conditions,  the  ideas  that  prevail 
of  apparent  necessity  in  the  cities. 

But  a  reaction  of  opinion  has  set  in,  and  a  reaction  of  deed 
may  follow,  —  must  follow,  if  this  nation  endures.  Some 
of  the  intelligent  and  moral,  some  of  the  well-to-do  and 
frightened,  have  set  up  their  homes  in  the  fields  :  it  is  a 
fashion  of  incalculable  possibilities  of  value  in  health,  in 
knowledge,  in  conduct.  Yet  while  cities  endure  as  the 
residences  of  multitudes,  the  general  citizenship  must 

1  Education,  chapter  iv. 


422       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

endeavor  to  palliate  evils  not  always  of  the  choosing  of 
particular  individuals  by  resorting  to  many  artifices  of 
device,  such  as  indoor  calisthenics,  gymnastics,  athletics, 
and  of  substance,  such  as  parks,  sewers,  waterworks, 
ventilation  and  sanitation  systems  in  buildings,  fresh-air 
excursions  in  the  country,  free  public  baths.  The  formal 
system  of  education  must  include  from  the  day  the  boy 
enters  school  all  of  these  artifices  in  their  order.  The 
school  is  the  cure  for  civilization,  as  we  have  seen  ;  and 
it  may  yet  be  required  to  provide  a  month  in  the  moun- 
tains or  by  the  sea  to  restore  our  city  boys  and  girls  to 
at  least  a  measure  of  the  playful  health  that  God  meant 
them  to  possess  when  He  gave  them  being.  We  may 
investigate  forever  the  mechanics  cf  life  :  we  shall  never 
resolve  the  miracles  of  growing  grass  or  of  the  twain 
become  one  flesh  and  spirit  in  the  child. 

We  know  at  last  that  health  is  the  beginning  of  holi- 
ness, its  circumstance,  its  outward  manifestation,  its 
form  and  manner.  Therefore  is  health  sacred,  right- 
eous, and  holy  :  and  whatsoever  is  unhealthy,  that  is  sin. 
To  cleanse  our  own  bodies  of  unhealthiness  and  to 
strengthen  every  personal  weakness,  to  cleanse  the  social 
body  of  unhealthiness  and  to  strengthen  every  social 
weakness :  these  are  moral  duties.  Who  shirks  them, 
who  offends  them,  must  answer  in  "the  great  assize," 
whatever  be  the  nature  or  the  time  of  that  final  account- 
ing. 

Many  a  schoolhouse,  most  factories,  all  tenements, — 
and  whatsoever  and  whosoever,  whether  in  ignorance  or 
by  design,  caused  these  to  be  what  they  are,  —  must 
stand  the  challenge, — Was  it  good  for  the  bodies  and 
souls  of  men  ? 


CHAPTER   XX 

CONSTANTS,  ELECTIVES,  PROGRAMMES,  AND  COURSES 

We  cannot  always  be  contemplative  or  pragmatical  abroad,  but  have  need  of  some 
delightful  intermissions  wherein  the  enlarged  soul  may  leave  off  awhile  her  severe 
schooling.  —  MILTON,  Prose  Works,  Tetrachordon. 

Every  want  satisfied  adds  to  the  fullness  of  life.  The  whole  object  of  the  fine  arts  is 
to  create  new  wants  in  order  to  satisfy  them.  —  WARD,  Applied  Sociology,  p.  330. 

Horace  Mann,  being  asked,  after  his  memorable  commencement  address,  if  he  had  not 
exaggerated  in  saying  that  no  possible  amount  of  time,  thought,  and  treasure  could  be 
too  much  to  expend  if  it  would  save  one  boy  from  ignorance  and  evil  and  train  him  for 
life,  replied  promptly,  "  Not  if  it  were  my  boy."  —  BIROSEYE,  Individual  Training  in 
Our  Colleges,  p.  196. 

SINCE  education  and  culture  are  to  be  redeemed  from 
traditionalism,  from  particularism,  and  from  teleological 
notions,  and  since  they  are  to  be  made  valuable  for  all 
kinds  and  conditions  of  men  and  women  in  all  good  kinds 
and  conditions  of  employment  and  of  leisure,  the  pro- 
grammes of  studies  and  exercises  must  be  made  at  once 
encyclopaedic  in  material,  scientific  in  method,  and  ap- 
propriate in  their  application  to  various  individual  men. 
In  pedagogy,  therefore,  four  questions  arise  :  I.  Are  there 
any  studies  and  exercises  that  should  be  pursued  by  all 
persons,  or  by  all  boys,  or  by  all  men  ?  2.  Are  there  any 
studies  or  exercises  that  are  of  sufficient  importance  to 
large  classes  of  individuals  to  warrant  their  inclusion  as 
electives  or  options  in  every  system  of  formal  education  ? 

3.  What  is  the  logical  sequence  of  studies  and  exercises  ? 

4.  What  is  the  logical  correlation  of  studies  and  exer- 
cises ?  Complete  answers  to  thes$  questions  have  con- 
stituted  the  subject-matter  of   entire  books;  they  are 
technical,  and  as  such  do  not  fall  within  the  purview  of 
the  present  work.    But  brief  answers,  involving  certain 


424       MOTIVES  AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

principles  herein  developed  at  length,  are  essential  to 
the  present  argument.  The  logic  of  this  inquiry  —  a 
proper  progressive  concatenation  of  facts,  concepts, 
judgments,1  and  opinions  from  which  reason  demands 
an  applied  conclusion  —  requires  an  issue  in  formulated 
recommendations. 

Play  is  an  absolute  constant  in  education  from  birth 
until  full  maturity  ;  and  it  is  a  very  valuable  aid  in  man- 
hood and  down  to  old  age.  In  association  with  play  and 
games,  both  intellectual  and  physical,  both  individual 
and  social,  a  choice  of  gymnastics,  athletics,  calisthenics, 
swimming,  hunting,  fishing,  travel,  is  an  absolute  con- 
stant in  childhood  and  youth.2  And  in  association  with 
these  more  or  less  undirected  exercises,  the  various  lines 
of  manual  training,  so  called,  present  themselves  for 
choice  by  educator  a,nd  educatee.  In  all  this  play  and 
physical  development  and  training,  the  motive  is  a  facile 
control  of  the  body,  a  delight  in  its  powers,  a  desire  to 
make  the  most  of  it. 

A  recognition  of  play  and  of  physical  training  as  the 
first  constant  in  education,  and  of  games  and  athletics 
as  the  first  constant  in  culture,  would  revolutionize  the 
procedures  of  formal  education  in  most  communities  and 
of  formal  culture  in  most  colleges  and  universities  ;  but 
not  in  all.  The  light  already  shines  in  some  places.  Play 
is  the  seed-ground  of  Intelligence  ;  physical  culture,  that 
of  Efficiency;  and  games,  that  of  Morality.  And  as  has 
been  displayed  already  in  this  argument,  Science  is  the 
harvest  of  Intelligence;  Art,  of  Efficiency;  and  Philo- 
sophy, of  Morality.  And,  again,  Science,  Art,  and  Philo- 
sophy bring  the  body  to  health  and  the  soul  to  integrity. 

1  Bagley,  The  Educative  Process,  p.  131. 

2  "  No  books  in  the  world  are  as  valuable  as  games  for  the  direct  devel- 
opment of  character.   Tne  virtues  engendered  in  the  playing-field  are  of 
the  most  permanent  and  valuable  nature."   Hughes,  The  Making  of  Citi- 
zens, p.  248. 


CONSTANTS   AND    ELECTIVES  425 

By  this  dialectic  of  growth,  man  in  civilization  may  come 
to  holiness. 

Another  absolute  constant  in  education  is  the  study 
of  the  present  world,  —  Nature-study,  geography,  and 
all  the  natural  and  physical  sciences  in  their  due  order 
and  relation.  Play,  the  first  constant,  is  the  approach  to 
Nature  as  well  as  to  human  nature.  "  Outdoor  life  "  ; 
what  a  reproach  the  phrase  is  to  the  ordinary  life  of 
man !  to  our  common  sense  !  to  our  foolish  ambitions ! 
Play  enlarges  life,  Nature-study  prolongs  it.  For  med- 
icine, hygiene,  botany,  field-roaming,  camping-in-the- 
woods,  and  every  other  investigation  and  activity  that 
takes  one  into  deep  and  secret  places,  thrusts  Death 
away  for  years  and  years  from  the  individual  and  from 
the  race.  To  know  Nature  fully  is  as  impossible  but 
almost  as  desirable  as  it  is  to  know  God ;  and  not  one 
day  in  our  lives  may  we  rightfully  neglect  association 
with  Nature  any  more  than  we  may  rightfully  neglect 
the  worship  of  God. 

A  recognition  of  Nature-study  and  of  science  as  the 
second  constant  .in  education  and  in  culture  would  re- 
volutionize the  procedures  of  formal  education  and  cul- 
ture in  most  institutions  of  learning,  would  revolution- 
ize civilization  itself  by  transforming,  by  returning, 
citizens  into  men.  It  is  too  much  to  expect  ?  So  were 
the  steam  engine  and  the  telephone  before  they  were 
discovered.  In  that  great  day,  Bruno,  Bacon,  Pestalozzi, 
Spencer,  Hall  will  be  justified. 

There  is  a  third  constant  in  education  in  every  land 
for  its  peoples,  the  vernacular,  not  for  its  own  sake,  but 
that  the  soul  of  the  individual  may  be  able  more  and  more 
completely  and  accurately  to  express  itself.  For  the  bet- 
ter understanding  of  the  vernacular,  the  study  of  other 
languages  is  desirable.  "  He  who  knows  no  foreign  lan- 
guages knows  nothing  of  his  own."  l  The  vernacular  as 

1  Goethe,  Sayings  in  Prose. 


426      MOTIVES   AND    VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

a  constant  in  education  includes  vocabulary,  reading, 
conversation,  recitation,  prose  and  verse  composition, 
grammar,  rhetoric,  debate,  oratory,  philology,  spelling, 
handwriting,  typewriting,  typesetting,  phonography,  and 
literature ;  the  subject-matter  of  the  native  tongue,  its 
constitution,  sciences,  and  arts. 

There  is  for  all  the  educable  and  cultivable  ages  of  a 
man  these  three  constants  and  but  two  more,  less  import- 
ant and  therefore  requiring  but  little  comment,  though 
vital,  —  music  and  drawing.  The  music  includes  indi- 
vidual and  not  merely  class  singing  and  voice  culture,  the 
acquisition  of  the  technic  of  musical  instruments,  and 
the  principles  of  composition.  For  every  one  ?  Certainly. 
For  those  "  born  with  musical  gifts  "  as  a  matter  of  right ; 
for  those  born  without  musical  gifts  as  a  matter  of  social 
necessity.  Music  is  the  universal  language,  the  soul  of 
poetry,  the  keynote  of  Nature,  the  pathway  to  peace  as 
well  as  to  power. 

Drawing:  the  term  here  is  synecdoche,  for  by  it  I  in- 
dicate all  modes  of  expression  by  representation,  —  draw- 
ing by  outlines,  in  mass,  in  color,  modeling,  sculpture, 
painting,  —  whatever  be  the  tools  and  material,  whether 
chalk,  lead,  graphite,  paper,  wood,  stone,  water-color,  oil, 
bronze.  Mode  and  tool  are  matters  of  indifference  ; 
the  representation  of  reality  —  of  reality  often  purer 
than  the  particular  real  thing — is  the  essential. 

While  there  are  no  other  constants  for  all  the  educa- 
ble and  cultivable  ages,  there  are  certain  constants  for 
particular  ages.  These  vary  for  particular  races  of  man- 
kind. In  a  paradoxical  sense,  an  appropriate  elective 
may  be  termed  a  constant  for  a  particular  individual, 
because  his  mental  diathesis  as  indicated  by  a  scientific 
diagnosis  requires  a  particular  regimen  of  thought 
or  of  physical  activity.  The  Negro,  no  doubt,  requires 
certain  studies  and  exercises  earlier  and  others  later 
than  the  Teuton ;  and  the  "  colored  man,"  —  the 


CONSTANTS   AND   ELECTIVES  427 

American  mestizo,  originally  bastard,  disowned  and  de- 
spised by  fathers  of  the  so-called  superior  race  but 
tenderly  nurtured  by  mothers  of  the  inferior  race,1 
—  abnormal  miscegenate  that  he  is,  goes  to  all  extremes 
of  precocity  and  of  arrest,  of  variety  and  simplicity  of 
powers.  To  each  race,  to  each  individual,  belong  the 
constants  appropriate  to  his  complete  education. 

Arithmetic,  both  as  the  science  of  multitude  of  mag- 
nitudes and  the  art  of  computing  them  and  as  a  mode 
of  conveying  information  of  the  world,  may  fairly  be 
termed  a  constant  in  the  education  of  boys  and  girls 
from  eight  to  sixteen  years  of  age.  Likewise,  geometry 
may  be  considered  a  constant  for  children  and  youth 
from  twelve  to  twenty  years  of  age.  And  similarly,  the 
algebraic  equation.2  But  mathematics  in  their  entirety 
belong  to  the  mathematical  specialist  and  to  the  phys- 
ical scientist.  As  such,  the  higher  mathematics  are 
properly  elective. 

History  in  its  exact  sense  cannot,  upon  philosophical 
grounds,  claim  a  place  as  a  constant  before  the  time  of 
adult  maturity.  Incomprehensible  in  its  substance  with- 
out the  apperceptive  materials  of  personal  experience, 
history  is  a  part  not  of  the  programme  of  education  but 
rather  of  that  of  culture.  The  effort  to  reduce  history 
to  the  gauge  of  childish  and  adolescent  intelligence  has 
emasculated  it  beyond  recognition.  Such  has  been 
its  perversion  in  text-books  and  in  popular  essays  and 

1  Our  Negro  is  literally  "  a  new  nation,"  a  mixture,  in  some  instances 
a  blend,  of  many  peoples.    With  a  superb  physical  basis,  this  "  nation  " 
may  yet  achieve  notable  things  in  world-history.   The  beauty  of  some  of 
the  women,  the  unusual  maternalism  of  all  of  them,  and  the  precocity 
of  the  children  indicate  biologically  singular  promise  for  the  future. 

2  The  reforms  scientifically  indicated  for  the  teaching  of  elementary 
mathematics  in  school  are   two :  to  postpone  instruction  in  them  until 
the  pupils  are  able  to  comprehend  their  processes  ;  and  to  present  them 
in  the  concrete  so  that  they  may  be  solved  with  the  enthusiasm  and  facility 
engendered  by  interest. 


428       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

narrative  volumes,  —  by  reason  of  prudery,  of  timidity,  of 
sheer  ignorance,  of  the  authority  and  influence  of  libel 
laws  for  the  living  and  respect  for  the  memory  of  the 
dead,  of  civility  and  politeness,  of  national  pride,  of  the 
illusions  of  things  past,  and  of  commercial  interests  of 
publishers,  —  that  what  little  true  history  can  be  discov- 
ered and  comprehended  can  scarcely  be  brought  to  light, 
and  that  history  itself  is  in  disrepute  for  recondite  re- 
moteness from  real  life  and  for  vague  superficiality  and 
general  dullness.  In  this  condition  of  the  American 
mind,  history  at  present  cannot  be  redeemed. 

Therefore,  history  is  a  pageant,1  a  panorama,2  rather 
than  a  revelation  of  men  and  of  mankind.  At  the  hands 
of  most  writers,  biography  is  overshadowed  by  the  same 
night.  "  To  be  a  really  good  historian,"  said  Macaulay, 
"  is  perhaps  the  rarest  of  intellectual  distinctions."  3  And 
to  be  a  thoroughly  appreciative  reader  of  history,  one 
must  be  of  intellectual  power  and  of  social  and  personal 
experience  equal  to  the  writer  of  it. 

This  criticism  of  superficiality  is  measurably  true  of 
all  the  sciences  that  draw  upon  history  for  their  mate- 
rials or  attempt  to  analyze  society  for  what  it  really  is 
and  contains,  —  economics,  political  science,  anthropo- 
logy, sociology,  to  cite  the  most  notable. 

Upon  the  face  of  this  presentation,  it  would  appear 
that  electives  are  generally  but  varieties  of  the  constants. 
As  such  they  become  options,  as,  for  example,  French  or 
German,  geology  or  astronomy,  psychology  or  philosophy. 
In  a  few  instances,  they  are  extensions  of  the  constants 
into  regions  too  remote  or  difficult  for  the  needs  of  most 
men  and  women.  In  other  instances,  they  are  fascinating 
pursuits  for  "  the  elect,"  as,  for  example,  sociology.  In 
the  final  instances,  they  become  the  special  themes  of 

1  Birrell,  Obiter  Dicta :    Series  ii,   Muse  of  History. 

2  Chancellor -Hewes,  The  United  States :  a  History;   Preface,  vol.  L 
9  Essays:  History. 


CONSTANTS   AND   ELECTIVES  429 

professional   inquiry, — theology,   jurisprudence,    thera- 
peutics, pedagogy,  architecture,  engineering. 

And  obviously  upon  this  analysis,  it  appears  that  the 
constants  are  more  in  evidence  in  youth  than  in  matur- 
ity, in  the  process  of  education,  the  plowing,  than  in  the 
process  of  culture,  the  planting,  of  the  human  mind. 

Some  years  ago,  strong  effort  was  made  to  group  the  stud- 
ies of  school  and  college  within  the  three  terms,  humanities, 
sciences,  and  arts.  Under  the  spell  of  this  trivium,  —  medi- 
aeval humanities,  modern  sciences,  ancient  arts,  —  I  for  one 
was  led  to  argue  in  public  speech  and  print  that  about  one 
third  of  the  tittle  of  every  high-school  pupil  should  be  spent 
upon  each  of  these  subjects.  The  fallacy  of  this  mechanical 
view  —  its  essential  traditionalism  under  the  guise  of  modern 
technical  precision  —  is  self-apparent  to  the  psychologist  and 
to  the  educator. 

The  determination  of  the  true  order  of  studies,  of  the 
particular  course  in  particular  subjects,  is  essentially 
a  task  for  the  philosopher.  In  history,  he  may  proceed 
from  myth  to  biography,  to  general  world-views,  to  local 
history,  to  American  history,  to  English,  to  modern,  to 
mediaeval,  to  ancient  history,  to  civil  government,  and 
he  may  end  in  political  science  ;  or  he  may  adopt  some 
other  order,  as  his  reasoning  directs.  His  purpose  is 
to  find  the  logic  of  the  time-perspective,  his  problem  is 
essentially  philosophical.  In  mathematics,  he  may  pro- 
ceed from  numbers  to  arithmetic,  to  geometry,  to  alge- 
bra, to  analytic  geometry,  to  calculus,  to  quaternions,  to 
mechanics :  again,  his  purpose  is  to  find  and  to  follow 
the  logical  order.  The  determination  of  the  appropriate 
age  for  the  pupil  to  pursue  a  particular  study  is  the  task 
of  the  psychologist,  whose  business  is  with  the  genesis  of 
powers,  with  the  development  of  interests  and  with 
the  discovery  of  needs.  He  studies  the  typical  child  of 
eight,  the  typical  child  of  twelve,  the  typical  child  of  six- 
teen years;  and  he  studies  also  the  individual  boy  and 


430       MOTIVES    AND    VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

the  individual  girl  and  by  their  peculiarities  distinguishes 
them  from  the  standard  types.  Knowing  the  types  and 
the  variations,  he  selects  the  subjects  and  the  topics  in 
the  constants, — always,  of  course,  retaining  the  logical 
essentials,  but  adding  the  particularly  appropriate  inci- 
dentals and  collaterals,  —  as  required  for  the  education 
of  the  children  or  for  the  culture  of  the  youth. 

To  this  task,  few  have  devoted  themselves;  but  the 
educational  psychologists  have  come  to  stay  and  to 
increase.1 

The  determination  of  the  programme  by  which  courses 
and  pupils  are  brought  together  year  by  year,  day  by 
day,  is  the  task  of  the  educator  ;  but  it  cannot  be  per- 
formed successfully  until  the  philosopher  and  the  psycho- 
logist have  both  accomplished  their  tasks  and  can  display 
approved  results.  Therefore,  an  educational  programme  for 
the  specific  grades  is  as  yet  unknown,  though  indicated.2 

There  are  two  most  technical  questions  that  concern 
us  here.  Of  these,  the  one  of  greatest  importance  is 
whether  a  curriculum  should  be  arranged  vertically  by 
subjects  or  horizontally  by  grades.  It  is  almost  useless 
to  study  a  subject  as  a  mass  of  information  :  it  must  be 
pursued  in  accordance  with  its  own  logic.3  Therefore, 
there  must  first  be  a  vertical  sequence.  But  it  is  quite  as 
useless  to  study  a  subject  before  one  has  the  apperceiv- 
ing  power.4  Therefore,  the  second  task  is  to  arrange 
the  items  of  the  day's  work  in  proper  association  :  this 
is  horizontal  correlation.  The  answer  to  the  question  is 
that  the  logical  order,  the  logical  sequence,  the  course 
of  the  particular  subject  is  the  necessary  philosophical 
means  to  the  pedagogical  end. 

1  The  prospect  is  very  encouraging.    Educational  Review :  Bibliography 
for  1906,  June,  1907,  pp.  47-62. 

2  Noss,  The  Fourth  Year,  The  Fifth  Year. 
8  Ward,  Applied  Sociology,  p.  308. 

4  Bagley,  The  Educative  Process,  p.  106,  and  works  there  cited. 


CONSTANTS   AND   ELECTIVES  431 

The  second  question,  less  important  but  not  unessen- 
tial, is  how  much  of  the  day's  work  in  each  particular 
grade  shall  be  required,  how  much  optional  (a  matter 
of  choice  between  several  topics),  and  how  much  elective 
—  a  matter  of  choice  between  work  (or  play)  and  nothing 
at  all  (or  rest).  "  Busy  work  "  in  the  primary  grades 
represents  the  entering  wedge  of  electives  for  children 
at  school  as  well  as  for  youth  at  college.  The  answer 
to  this  question  is  practical.  To  place  an  eleven-year- 
old  boy,  because  he  is  bright  and  quick,  with  fifteen- 
year-old  average  boys  indicates  failure  to  see  that  the 
precocious  boy  needs  not  to  be  pushed  forward  beyond 
the  experiences  of  his  soul,  but  to  be  given  more  work 
of  the  kind  needed  and  enjoyed  by  eleven-year-old  boys.1 
Hence,  the  suitable  elective  as  extra  work  appropriate 
for  eleven-year-old  boys  is  the  solution,  not  crowding  the 
high  school  with  children,  and  insulting  the  world  with 
college  graduates  not  yet  come  to  manhood.  If  one  col- 
lege "freshman"  can  do  twenty  hours  of  "freshman" 
work  while  most  freshmen  do  sixteen,  let  him  do  it ;  but 
do  not  for  that  reason  graduate  him  in  three  years  instead 
of  four  :  the  same  principle  holds  in  high  schools  and  in 
grammar  grades. 

All  elaboration  of  these  principles  belongs  properly  in  texts 
upon  school  management :  it  suffices  here  to  suggest  the 
problems  and  to  vindicate  the  principles  for  their  solution. 

The  argument  of  this  chapter  is  not  quite  complete 
without  note  of  a  question  previously  discussed  in  these 
pages.  Does  not  the  need  of  society  properly  influence, 
to  an  important  degree,  the  presentation  of  certain  sub- 
jects in  the  schoolroom  ?  Again,  I  answer,  No.  As  I 

1  "Never  press  a  child  to  learn.  The  curiosity  of  children  is  a  natural 
propensity,  which  comes  before  instruction.  Conceit  is  always  to  be 
dreaded  as  a  result  of  premature  education."  Fenelon,  Traite  de  f  Edu- 
cation des  Filles  ["  Fragments"  :  pp.  9,  13,  n,  transl.  by  B.  C.  R.]. 


432       MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

have  argued  above,  the  emasculation  of  history  -for  school 
purposes  has  made  that  subject  contemptible  and  pre- 
vents in  this  generation  in  America  a  development  of 
that  respect  for  history  which  has  always  marked  great 
and  enduring  civilizations.  Our  people  do  not  know, 
and  because  of  their  school  experiences  are  unwilling  to 
inquire,  what  history  really  is  and  teaches.  We  cannot 
impart  to  children  or  instill  into  them  what  is  essentially 
beyond  their  powers.  Consequently,  to  teach  out  of 
proper  order  and  time  any  subject  or  topic  because 
society  seems  to  require  it  —  in  other  words,  to  yield  to 
utilitarianism  —  is  to  do  worse  than  fail ;  it  is  to  give 
offense.  Already  too- many  persons  have  learned  the  art 
of  finance  before  mastering  the  fundamental  principles 
of  morality  ;  and  too  many  have  acquired  the  art  of  pol- 
itics before  inquiring  into  the  science  of  government* 

Not  the  school  for  society,  not  the  boy  for  civilization, 
not  the  man  for  his  country ;  but  all  education  for  the 
most  in  the  present,  —  which,  closely  analyzed,  is  the 
immediate  future,  — because  the  whole  cannot  be  greater 
than  the  sum  of  all  its  parts,  and  mankind  is  temporal  but 
each  man  eternal. 

1  Cf.    Woods,   "  Democracy    a   New   Unfolding  of  Human  Power," 
Studies  in  Philosophy  and  Psychology. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

RIGHTS    AND    OBLIGATIONS    OF    SOCIETY  AND   EDUCATORS 

God  has  lent  us  the  earth  for  our  life  ;  it  is  a  great  entail  —  RUSKIN,  Seven  Lamps  of 
Architecture,  chap,  vi,  §  9. 

The  wise  man  must  remember  that  while  he  is  a  descendant  of  the  past,  he  is  a  parent 
of  the  future  ;  and  that  his  thoughts  are  as  children  born  to  him,  which  he  may  not  care- 
lessly let  die.  —  SPENCER,  First  Principles  of  Synthetic  Philosophy,  p.  123. 

The  animating  spring  of  all  improvement,  in  individuals  and  in  societies,  is  not  their 
knowledge  of  the  actual,  but  their  conception  of  the  possible.  —  MARTINEAU,  Spiritual 
Growth,  vol.  vi,  p.  87. 

THE  rights  of  society  against  educators  constitute  the 
obligations  of  the  educators  because  of  their  profession 
of  competence  and  of  desire  to  educate.  The  rights  of 
educators  against  society  constitute  the  obligations  of 
society  in  accepting  the  services  of  the  educators. 

The  first  right  of  society  is  vested  in  the  child ;  it 
is,  therefore,  the  first  obligation  of  teachers  to  society. 
The  child  has  the  right  to  grow  in  knowledge  at  school, 
to  improve  in  health  and  in  morality,  and  to  gain  in 
efficiency.  In  a  graded  school,  the  obligation  of  the 
teacher  is  to  take  any  class,  good  or  bad,  and  in  the 
course  of  the  term  to  make  it  better  as  a  class  and  to 
make  as  many  as  possible  of  its  individuals  better.  The 
teacher  who  spoils  a  good  class  or  discourages  or  con- 
fuses a  good  pupil  has  failed  in  his  obligation,  voluntarily 
assumed  by  his  public  profession.  The  child  is  in  the 
world  by  fate,  not  by  choice.  The  unborn  babe  is  doomed 
to  birth  as  is  the  adult  to  death.1  And  we  who  environ 

1  ' '  The  doom  is  on  us,  as  it  is  on  you, 
That  nothing  can  undo  ; 
And  all  in  vain  you  warn  : 
As  your  fate  is  to  die,  our  fate  is  to  be  born" 

Howells,  From  Generation  to  Generation. 


434      MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

the  child  are  to  him  angels  of  heaven  or  fiends  of  hell 
until  he  has  learned  what  this  world  really  is. 

We  need  to  remember  every  day  that  no  child  is  re- 
sponsible for  his  inheritance.  But  we  should  not  exag- 
gerate our  own  responsibility  towards  the  child  ;  it  does 
not  exceed  our  own  powers  and  opportunities.  Within 
these  limits,  the  teacher  owes  to  the  young  stranger  in 
this  world  a  training  to  obedience,  a  discipline  to  intel- 
lectual effort,  and  abundant  information.  If  for  no  other 
reason,  teachers  should  be  constant  readers,  that  they 
may  always  have  fresh  and  living  knowledge  to  impart. 
If  for  no  other  reason,  teachers  should  be  constant 
scholars,  persistent  students,  that  they  may  not  forget 
what  it  means  to  study.  Any  child  is  to  be  pitied  who 
feels  that  his  teacher  is  not  intelligent,  earnest,  ambitious, 
and  well-informed.  A  teacher  may  have  a  life  certificate 
and  a  life  appointment  dated  ten,  twenty,  thirty  years 
ago  ;  the  certificate  itself  will  not  save  him  from  the 
searching  eyes  of  the  child  anxious  for  intellectual  nour- 
ishment. Much  of  the  disorder  in  schoolrooms  occurs 
at  times  when  teachers  are  too  tired  to  be  giving  out 
information. 

Quite  as  great  as  the  responsibility  of  the  teacher  to 
the  child  is  his  responsibility  to  the  mother  of  the  child. 
The  mother  brought  the  child  into  the  world  in  travail 
and  in  peril  of  death.  In  nine  cases  in  ten,  the  food 
eaten  and  the  clothing  worn  by  children  represent  the 
personal  deprivations  of  self-sacrificing  mothers.  Consider 
what  it  means  to  be  the  wife  of  a  man  who  earns  eight, 
ten,  fifteen,  twenty  dollars  a  week,  and  the  mother  of  three, 
six,  possibly  ten  children,  eating  three  meals  a  day  and 
wearing  out  clothing  and  shoes  seven  days  in  the  week  ! 
Consider  the  care  of  the  father  and  of  the  children  in 
sickness,  and  the  anxiety  when  work  is  slack  or  wanting 
and  the  savings  run  low!  Consider  the  moral  responsi- 
bility of  training  the  family !  Day-work,  night-worry, 


RIGHTS   AND   OBLIGATIONS  435 

even  the  strain  of  holiday-making,  fear  of  rent-day  and 
"of  rainy  days  :"  this  is  the  price  that  the  mother  pays 
for  the  lives  of  her  children.  Behind  every  child  in  his 
class,  the  good  teacher  sees  the  mother  and  remembers 
what  the  child  costs  the  mother  in  work  and  prayer  and 
sacrifice.  School-teaching  is  hard  ;  but  there  is  no  paid 
occupation  so  hard  as  taking  care  of  a  family  of  two 
adults  and  several  children  on  ten  dollars  a  week.  No- 
thing else  is  quite  so  hard  save  combining  these  family 
duties-  and  working  in  mill  or  shop  or  at  the  washtub  to 
earn  money  for  the  family.  The  death-rate  begins  to 
take  its  heaviest  toll  at  the  point  where  the  per  capita 
family  income  is  so  low  that  the  mother  must  "go  to 
work."  The  cemeteries  are  full  of  the  graves  of  the 
babies  and  young  children  whose  mothers  worked  in 
mills,  of  the  mothers  themselves  and  of  the  fathers. 
Here  men,  women,  and  children  break  under  the  agony 
of  life.  Teaching  is  a  sacred  profession  because  the 
greatest  service  one  woman  can  render  to  another  is  to 
help  her  to  rear  her  children  well,  —  because  teaching 
serves  motherhood,  which  is  wholly  sacred.1 

The  father  who  earns  the  money  used  by  the  mother 
to  keep  the  child  at  school  has  certain  rights.  Since  all 
the  fathers  vote,  we  hear  frequently  about  this  right. 
In  times  past,  the  rights  of  fathers  against  their  child- 
ren, against  the  teachers  of  their  children,  against  even 
the  mothers  were  grossly  exaggerated.  The  slight  ele- 
ment of  truth  is  this  :  the  father  who  is  truly  a  good 
father  and  a  good  husband  deserves  to  be  forgiven  for 
taking  a  wife  and  bringing  the  children  into  the  world, 

1  "  Ah,  none  but  she  who  has  borne 

A  child  beneath  her  breast  may  know 
What  wondrous  thrill  and  subtle  spell 
Comes  from  this  wondrous  woven  band 
That  binds  a  mother  to  her  unborn  child 
Within  her  womb." 

Finch,  The  Unborn. 


436      MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

and  to  be  dealt  with  patiently  and  mercifully,  that  he 
may  be  able  to  go  on  living  in  the  world  and  support- 
ing those  for  whom  he  is  responsible.  When  he  gives 
his  life  to  the  lives  that  he  has  brought  into  being,  he  is 
discharging  his  debt,  though  he  can  never  gain  a  balance 
to  his  credit  in  respect  to  his  wife  and  children. 

Much  is  said  of  the  rights  of  the  taxpayer  against  the 
teacher.  Most  of  the  taxes  that  go  to  the  support  of 
the  teacher  are  raised  by  levies  upon  real  estate;  and 
the  small  holdings  are  usually  assessed  nearer  to  their 
true  values  than  the  large.  The  owner  of  a  homestead 
usually  must  earn  from  labor  the  money  that  he  pays  in 
taxes.  Usually  such  a  man  has  a  family  to  support  and 
his  entire  income  is  less  than  the  amount  that  he 
might  beneficially  use  for  himself,  his  wife,  his  children, 
and  other  relatives  naturally  dependent  upon  him.  In 
consequence,  every  dollar  that  he  pays  in  taxes  is  a  dollar 
that  he  might  use  to  the  direct  advantage  of  his  family. 
While  all  this  is  true,  it  is  also  true  that  his  school  tax, 
whether  levied  by  state  law  or  by  municipal  ordinance, 
represents  a  gain  rather  than  a  loss,  for  most  school- 
teachers are  worth  to  the  taxpayers  more  money  than 
they  receive.  It  is  right  that  this  should  be  so.  It  is  the 
duty  of  every  teacher,  of  every  artist,  of  every  scientist, 
of  every  professional  man,  of  every  Christian  to  obey  the 
law  of  good  measure  and  running  over. 

But  the  small  taxpayer  is  not  the  only  taxpayer.  The 
entire  tendency  is  toward  the  development  of  rich  men 
and  of  many  rich  men,  for  the  rich  are  growing  richer 
and  more  numerous  with  every  decade.1  The  total  pay- 
rolls of  the  teachers  of  American  cities  never  equal  the 
payrolls  of  the  bartenders.  Liquors,  tobacco,  amusements, 
advertising;  each  of  these  items  is  several  times  greater 

1  Le  Rossignol,  Orthodox  Socialism,  a  Criticism  ;  Mayo-Smith,  Statis- 
tics and  Economics  ;  Patten,  The  New  Basis  of  Civilization  ;  Smart,  The 
Distribution  of  Income. 


RIGHTS    AND   OBLIGATIONS  437 

annually  than  the  entire  cost  of  American  education, 
public  and  private.  As  Benjamin  Franklin  said,  the 
heaviest  taxes  are  not  those  of  government,  but  those  of 
the  pleasures  and  amusements  and  vices. 

Again,  the  teacher  is  responsible  to  the  teachers  who 
taught  him,  to  the  world  of  education  and  of  culture  by 
which  he  himself  has  been  made  scholar  and  educator, 
to  the  saints  and  heroes  and  martyrs  who  have  kept  ideas 
alive  in  all  ages.  This  responsibility  may  easily  be  for- 
gotten, for  practical  life,  for  ordinary  dull  daily  life,  is  not 
a  season  of  spiritual  illumination  and  of  spiritual  exalta- 
tion, but  of  resolute,  silent,  patient  absorption  in  the 
tasks  before  one.1 

Finally,  the  nation  in  whose  midst  the  teacher  was  born 
and  reared,  the  State  by  whose  laws,  customs,  and  tradi- 
tions he  exists,  the  Church  which  makes  life  sacrosanct, 
his  life,  his  pupils'  lives,  and  all  the  other  social  institu- 
tions that  condition  and  environ  him  have  rights  against 
the  teacher ;  and  he  is  under  obligations  to  them  all.  Even 
the  city  whose  officers  collect  taxes  and  pay  salaries,  its 
governing  boards,  its  chief  rulers,  have  a  claim  against 
the  teacher  that  he  perform  honorably  and  diligently  the 
tasks  that  he  professes  ability  to  perform. 

The  complex  civilization  environing  the  schools  compels 
an  answering  complexity  within.  When  a  community 
calls  for  professional  men,  housekeepers,  stenographers, 
clerks,  salesmen,  it  is  cruel  to  send  out  only  composition 
writers  and  computers  of  numbers.  Every  large  city  suf- 
fers from  the  diseases  of  a  congested  population,  —  pov- 
erty, over-competition  of  labor  and  capital,  ignorance 
of  hygiene,  defiance  of  sanitation,  crime,  vice.  The 
School  should  supply  the  best  remedies  known  to  modern 
culture  for  the  overcoming  of  these  diseases.  It  should 

1  "  Tasks  in  hours  of  insight  willed 

Can  be  through  hours  of  gloom  fulfilled." 

Matthew  Arnold,  Morality. 


438       MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

be  the  antitoxin  for  civilization.  It  is  the  true  antidote 
for  the  great  city.  The  School  is  a  mode  of  meeting 
the  material  development  of  society  by  effecting  a  cor- 
responding spiritual  development. 

It  is  the  fortune  of  every  school  superintendent  to 
listen  to  the  advocates  of  the  thousand  and  one  remedies 
of  laymen  and  of  educationalists  for  the  evils  and  de- 
ficiencies of  modern  public  education.  A  mere  list  of 
these  remedies  by  title  would  fill  the  pages  designed  for 
this  chapter.  Each  and  all  of  them  presuppose  one 
condition,  more  money,  which  President  Eliot  of  Harvard 
has  happily  emphasized  in  the  title  of  a  little  book,  big 
with  meaning,  "  More  Money  for  the  Public  Schools." 

The  first  effect  of  heavier  expenditures  would  be  to 
attract  to  the  governing  boards  and  to  the  teaching 
faculties  of  the  schools  a  class  of  men  and  women 
superior  to  those  now  present.  I  observed  several  years 
ago1  that  in  a  democracy  "  extravagant  "  governments 
seldom  dare  to  be  corrupt.  The  general  truth  that  very 
parsimonious  governing  boards  and  executive  officers 
are  comparatively  safe  in  their  various  modes  of  benefit- 
ing themselves  is  not  as  well  known  and  as  well  under- 
stood as  it  should  be.  Of  course,  in  the  essential  facts 
any  corrupt  board  is  extravagant  and  any  truly  extra- 
vagant board  is  immoral ;  but  boards  that  spend  freely 
arouse  public  interest  by  their  appeal  to  the  public  im- 
agination as  well  as  by  their  exciting  the  resentful  enmity 
of  the  large  taxpayer  and  the  suspicious  fear  of  the 
small  taxpayer.  On  the  other  hand,  the  board  that  asks 
relatively  light  appropriations  and  spends  relatively  little 
money  is  welcomed  by  a  very  considerable  portion  of  the 
population  because  it  eases  the  tax-rate  ;  and  many  men 
and  women  still  feel  toward  taxes  the  hatred  inherited 
from  centuries  of  feudal  and  royal  oppression.  To  be 
sure,  the  margin  between  the  light  appropriation  and 

1  Our  Schools,  p.  100. 


RIGHTS    AND    OBLIGATIONS  439 

the  inevitably  necessary  expenditure  is  likely  to  be  small ; 
but  almost  no  one  suspects  that  there  is  any  margin  at 
all  that  may  be  stolen. 

Nor  is  this  the  only  evil.  When  expenditures  are  low, 
and  the  quality  of  result  expected  is  consequently  low, 
men  of  ability  and  spirit  dislike  to  serve  the  institution  in 
any  capacity.  The  result  is  a  low  quality  of  governing  con- 
trol and  executive  service.  The  officers  often  try  to  make 
up  for  their  own  small  stealings  or  salaries  by  developing 
political  power  through  petty  manipulations  of  the  posi- 
tions and  personnel  of  the  institution.  In  consequence, 
the  institution  becomes  a  labyrinth  of  illegitimate  rights 
and  influences,  and  cannot  perform  its  proper  social  func- 
tions. When,  however,  expenditures  run  high,  public  ex- 
pectation is  aroused  ;  and  the  quality  of  all  the  persons 
connected  with  the  institution,  whatever  it  be,  —  political, 
religious,  educational,  economic,  —  steadily  improves. 

Whatever  be  the  condition  of  any  institution  in  any 
community,  it  tends  to  perpetuate  itself  by  forming  a 
circle,  good  or  bad,  as  the  case  may  be,  —  an  excellent 
quality  of  control  and  service,  generous  appropriations, 
wise  expenditures,  honesty,  impartiality,  good  reputation, 
high  ideals  ;  or  poor  quality  of  control  and  service,  par- 
simonious revenues,  unwise  expenditures,  dishonesty, 
favoritism,  bad  reputation,  no  ideals. 

How,  then,  shall  we  break  the  present  "  vicious  circle  " 
of  education  ?  By  acquiring  ideals.  And  if  we  could 
acquire  them,  how  should  we  spend  the  increasingly 
generous  revenues  that  would  follow  ?  The  answer  is 
not  merely  theoretical,  it  is  also  practical,  for  we  may 
see  here  in  America  many  communities  and  institutions 
with  steadily  rising  per  capita  expenditures. 

We  must  not  deceive  ourselves  in  this  matter.  Money  has 
been  depreciating  steadily  for  ten  years ;  and  merchandise  and 
property  have  been  rising  in  price.  Unless  the  endowment 
and  income  of  an  institution  under  private  control  have 


440       MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

increased  thirty  or  forty  per  cent  in  the  past  ten  years,  with 
the  same  number  of  students,  the  institution  is  now  relatively 
poorer  than  it  was  then.  Similarly  with  the  appropriation 
for  the  public  institution  of  education.  He  who  shows  that  the 
per  capita  cost  of  education  has  risen  ten  or  even  twenty  per 
cent  in  his  own  community  has  proven  that  relatively  his 
schools  have  gone  backward,  for  thirty  dollars  will  buy  no 
more  education  now  than  twenty-two  or  twenty-four  dollars 
would  buy  ten  years  ago. 

Even  worse.  The  average  American  possesses  now  thirty- 
five  per  cent  more  property  than  he  did  ten  years  ago  and 
has  had  an  even  greater  gain  in  income.  Public  and  private 
education  lags  behind  and  cannot  show  even  a  proportional 
increase,  whereas  an  even  greater  increase  has  been  de- 
manded by  the  increasing  social  strain  of  civilization. 

We  should  recognize  the  State  public  school  system 
as  a  hierarchy  by  establishing  the  best  educator  in  the 
State  as  State  Superintendent  (or  Commissioner  of  Edu- 
cation, the  title  matters  not)  actually  in  control  of  all 
municipalities  and  should  pay  him  the  salary  appropriate 
to  the  position.  In  populous  States,  the  leading  physician 
receives  an  income  that  makes  twenty-five  thousand 
dollars  a  year  for  the  leading  educator  seem  small.  We 
should  support  the  head  of  the  State  system  by  giving 
him  an  adequate  force  of  competent  associates,  assistants, 
agents,  inspectors,  supervisors,  examiners,  and  clerks.  We 
should  recognize  the  city  superintendent  as  an  officer 
charged  with  a  multitude  of  duties  requiring  a  degree  of 
executive  ability  so  high  as  to  make  the  educational 
qualifications  secondary  though  essential,  and  should  pay 
him  fifteen  or  twenty  thousand  dollars  a  year.  Physicians, 
lawyers,  dentists,  industrial  managers  of  high  repute  get 
more.  So  would  the  city  superintendent,  if  his  legal 
powers  equaled  his  actual  responsibilities.  Principals  of 
large  schools,  supervisors  of  subjects  and  of  departments, 
directors  of  popular  lecture  courses,  and  other  general 


RIGHTS    AND    OBLIGATIONS  44! 

managers  would  receive  three,  four,  five  times  as  much  as 
now,  and  would  then  receive  only  as  much  as  principals  of 
schools  actually  do  receive  in  England,  which  we  are  so 
ignorant  as  to  suppose  behind  us  in  real  education.  Class 
teachers  in  the  public  kindergartens,  elementary  and 
secondary  schools,  colleges,  institutes,  and  universities 
would  receive  from  one  to  five  thousand  dollars  a  year, 
averaging  at  least  twenty-five  hundred  in  even  the  lower 
schools,  and  four  thousand  in  the  higher.  Why  ?  So  as 
to  attract  the  best  talent  to  the  work  of  developing 
human  wealth,  which  is  the  only  real  wealth,  and  which 
is  the  cause  of  material,  visible  goods,  and  so  as  to  sup- 
port this  talent  fitly  at  its  work.  Strange  as  it  may 
seem  to  a  few,  this  very  stage  is  but  a  short  distance 
ahead  in  communities  that  are  progressing. 

We  should  increase  greatly  the  number  of  teachers 
not  only  because  education  would  be  greatly  prolonged 
and  the  number  of  children  at  school  greatly  increased, 
but  also  because  we  should  give  every  class  of  thirty  or 
forty  pupils  into  the  care  of  two  teachers  in  association. 
We  should  greatly  enlarge  our  school  accommodations, 
allowing  at  least  two  rooms  to  every  class,  and  several 
general  rooms  to  every  school.  We  should  also  increase 
the  area  of  land  set  aside  for  school  grounds.  And  we 
should  multiply  in  variety  and  in  value  the  studies,  exer- 
cises, recreations,  and  interests  to  be  afforded  boys  and 
girls  and  men  and  women.  In  short,  the  very  increase  of 
material  supplies  and  of  educational  opportunities  would 
increase  the  obligations  of  the  profession.  As  it  is  now, 
we  are  ignorantly  held  to  be  responsible  far  beyond  the 
possibilities  of  our  achievement  for  want  of  legal  rights 
and  of  material  resources.  Perhaps  we  ourselves  have 
failed  to  see  the  vastness  of  our  opportunity,  considered 
theoretically,  and  the  essential  nature  and  the  absolute 
necessity  of  our  function  in  civilized  society;  and  conse- 
quently have  asked  for  too  little. 


CHAPTER   XXII 

THE       NATURAL       MAN  :       HIS       MOTIVES,       IDEALS,       AND 
PRINCIPLES 

The  poor  man  comes  to  us  from  yesterday's  wrongs  ;  and  he  generates  beings  who  are 
carrying  into  to-morrow  the  birth-marks  of  to-day's  evils.  —  PATTBN,  New  Basis  of  Civ- 
ilization, p.  71. 

For  where  the  argument  of  intellect 
Is  added  unto  evil  will  and  power, 
No  rampart  can  the  people  make  against  it. 
DANTE,  Divina  Commedia,  Inferno,  canto  xxxi,  55-57  (Longfellow,  transl.). 

When  good  and  evil  alike  are  seen  to  grow  out  of  assignable  antecedents,  by  processes 
that  calmly  judging  men  can  pretty  closely  foretell ;  to  rest  on  laws  of  growth  and  disease 
that  apply  to  character  as  other  laws  apply  to  the  physical  organism  ;  to  express  the  lack 
of  imagination,  or  the  low  power  of  reasoning,  that  makes  men  hard,  cruel,  and  unjust , 
or  to  flow  from  the  over-excitement  or  insufficient  satisfaction  of  physical  impulses  that 
make  them  a  prey  to  lust  or  to  alcohol ;  then  every  thinking  man  is  made  to  feel  in  a  new 
sense  that  but  for  the  grace  of  conditions  that  he  has  only  partially  controlled,  there,  where 
the  criminal  passes  to  disgrace  and  misery,  goes  he  himself,  —  the  juryman,  the  judge, 
the  newspaper  reader.  —  HOBHOUSB,  Morals  in  Evolution,  part  i,  p.  118. 

THE  natural  man  may  be  the  man  in  complete  sav- 
agery,—  the  primitive  man  of  Nature;  he  may  be  the 
man  without  formal  education,  in  the  presence  of  a  com- 
plex civilization,  whose  influences  he  cannot  wholly  es- 
cape ;  or  he  may  be  the  man  who  has  resented  formal 
education  and  opposed  whatever  else  he  could  of  the 
civilization  environing  him.  Of  the  first  type  of  natural 
man,  we  have  some  examples  within  the  United  States, 
but  not  enough  for  our  serious  consideration.  Of  the 
second  type,  we  have  millions  of  examples.  Of  the  third 
type,  we  have  thousands,  — our  criminals,  vagrants,  idlers, 
paupers,  and  parasites.  It  is  the  second  type  that  we  are 
to  consider  here, — the  untaught  man  or  woman  strug- 
gling to  live  the  human  life  in  the  thick  of  things  that 
he  certainly  cannot  understand. 

There  is  a  significant  confirmation  that  psychology  and 
sociology  make  for  the  truths  that  each  primarily  displays. 


THE    NATURAL   MAN  443 

Psychology  discerns  certain  moods  in  man, — natural  to  him, 
appearing  in  due  order  as  he  progresses  through  life,  self- 
evolved,  genetic,  normal,  not  in  the  least  the  product  of  any 
kind  of  formal  education,  on  the  contrary,  often  unfortun- 
ately repressed  or  distorted  by  pseudo-education.  Socio- 
logy discerns  certain  moods  in  communities  and  societies, — 
natural  to  nations  and  peoples,  appearing  in  due  order  as 
the  society  progresses  in  civilization,  destined,  genetic,  nor- 
mal, not  in  the  least  the  product  of  deliberate  social  willing, 
on  the  contrary,  often  unfortunately  repressed  or  distorted 
by  pseudo-science. 

To  these  personal  moods  or  modes,  psychology  has 
given  the  special  name  of  motives.  To  the  corresponding 
social  modes,  sociology  has  given  the  special  name  of  in- 
stitutions. Only  in  an  advanced  stage  of  culture,  when 
one  can  summon  the  events  of  life  in  clear  and  complete 
retrospect,  does  one  become  conscious  of  past  motives; 
and  never  is  one  conscious  of  present  motives.  The  phil- 
osopher knows  why  he  did  some  past  things :  not  even 
he  knows  why  he  is  now  doing  present  things.  Similarly, 
in  an  advanced  stage  of  civilization,  when  society  has 
fully  developed  a  self-conscious  leisure  class,  it  becomes 
possible  to  recognize  those  products  of  social  motivation 
which  history  slowly  develops  and  which  we  loosely 
classify  as  institutions,  meaning  thereby  not  special 
foundations  (e.  g.  a  hospital,  a  college,  an  asylum),  but 
habits,  customs,  modes  of  thinking,  feeling,  doing. 

The  primary  and  one  absolutely  essential  motive  in  the 
individual  man  is  to  live.  We  may  not  properly  speak  of 
the  desire  to  live  as  a  motive,  for  there  is  a  suggestion  of 
definiteness  in  desire  that  lifts  it  above  motive  toward  the 
clear  consciousness  of  purpose.  Motive  is  wholly  uncon- 
scious, desire  is  subconscious,  purpose  fully  conscious  : 
stated  otherwise,  motive  is  pure  will,  desire  is  will  and 
feeling,  purpose  is  will  and  intellection.  Motive  has  no 
object,  desire  sees  an  object,  purpose  sets  out  to  attain 


/I /I /I       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

the  object.    But  without  motivation,  there  can  be  no  de- 
sire ;  and  without  desire,  there  can  be  no  purpose.1 

Motive  expresses  itself  in  impulse.  Persistence  in  im- 
pulses of  the  same  nature  displays  steady  motivation,  a 
health  of  body  that  is  also  strength.  Surplus  strength  — 
abounding  health  —  displays  vitality  beyond  the  require- 
ments of  the  internal  machinery  of  the  body.  It  mothers 
impulses,  manufactures  desires,  multiplies  purposes. 
Such  vitality  imperils  the  soul ;  for  it  tends  to  destroy 
memory,  habit,  integrity,  identity,  character.  It  leads  to 
lusts  of  the  flesh  and  to  pride  of  life. 

Overflowing  physical  energy  at  once  invites  and  be- 
trays psychical  vitality.  The  invalid  may  think  clearly, 
for  consciousness  consumes  but  little  force :  it  is  phos- 
phorescent :  it  is  the  light  of  universal  mind  reflected 
from  the  mirror  of  an  individual  body.  The  man  of  valor 
may  think  powerfully,  feeding  his  consciousness  with 
calorific  combustibles  till  it  burns  and  flares  and  shines 
and  glows  incandescent.2 

Deficient  physical  energy  also  at  once  invites  and  be- 
trays psychical  vitality.  The  soul  tries  to  succor  and 
rescue  the  body  :  for  the  soul  built  the  body.  (Other- 
wise, the  growth  of  the  body  is  inexplicable.)  Often 
when  the  body  is  invalid  or  convalescent,  the  soul  is 
submerged. 

The  first  mode  pursued  by  the  soul  proposing  to  live 
is  hunger,  —  for  drink,  for  food,  for  sleep.  This  special 
motive  in  its  three  phases  is  seen  in  the  newborn  babe 
and  in  the  convalescent  invalid.  To  cross  this  motive,  to 
fail  in  it,  promptly  induces  insanity  and  death. 

1  Intention  is  a  concentration  of  the  mind  functioning  as  intellect  upon 
a  special  object.  It  is  the  second  power  of  attention.  Intention  is  not  to 
be  confused  with  purpose,  for  it  is  not  the  issue  of  motive,  but  a  highly 
developed  form  of  consciousness. 

8  Of  the  first  type,  Pope  and  Stevenson :  of  the  second,  Washington 
and  Bismarck. 


THE    NATURAL    MAN  445 

Very  closely  resembling  the  mode  of  hunger  is  the 
appetite  for  warmth  (in  too  great  cold)  and  for  coolness 
(in  too  great  heat).  In  civilization,  we  gratify  this  tem- 
perature appetite  by  clothing  and  housing,  —  near  and 
distant  shelter  of  the  body,  whose  life  is  a  flame  flicker- 
ing upon  matter  between  94°  and  108°  Fahrenheit  and 
comfortable  only  at  98.5°  1 

Resultant  from  these  modes  are  two,  —  the  motive 
to  pay  out,  to  get  clear  of,  excess  vigor,  and  the  motive  to 
understand  the  means  of  supplying  these  appetites.  To 
do  things  (to  get  action)  and  to  know*  things  (curiosity) 
are  secondary  motives,  not  primary,  and  yet  by  no  means 
purposes,  or  even  desires.  The  ignorant,  immoral,  ineffi- 
cient man  of  primitive  energy,  —  of  motivation,  —  does 
not  care  at  all  whether  he  expends  his  energy  in  run- 
ning, in  fighting,  in  bearing  burdens,  in  heavy  labor,  or 
burns  it  up  in  drunkenness  or  in  lechery ;  but  expend  it 
or  burn  it,  he  must.  Unless  he  destroys  it,  this  tre- 
mendous energy  will  craze  him.  He  is  the  stuff  of  which 
the  true  king  is  to  be  made  ;  but  he  is  far  more  likely  to 
become  a  demon,  a  fiend,  a  brute,2  than  a  king. 

The  motive  curiosity  is  the  mother  of  intelligence  and 
is  therefore  the  beginning  of  the  intellectual  or  rational 
life.  But  it  is  not  that  life. 

Motive  can  neither  be  inhibited  nor  educated,  but  it 
may  be  trained  or  schooled.3  The  movement  of  motive 

1  There  is  a  discussion  of  life  as  a  phase  of  or  an  identity  with   ioniza- 
tion  in  Duncan,  The  New  Knowledge,  part  vi.   Also,  Lodge,  Electrons. 

2  I  use  these  words  apologetically.    No  creature  of  the  imagination,  no 
animal  ancestor  or  cousin,  of  man  can  be  as  bad  as  the  fearful  man  of 
blind  "  passion,"  —  be  he  citizen  or  woodsman,  sprung    from  slum    or 
palace.     Too    much   feeding,  too  little  thinking ;  and  man  sounds  the 
uttermost  depths  of  the  abyss  of  hatred  against  all  living  things. 

3  It  may  be  transformed.    In  appearance,  the  transformation  is  a  dis- 
placement.  But  the  good  lover  is  always  a  good  hater.    He  is  full  of 
motive,  has  therefore  many  motives.     Their  forms  and  directions  depend 
upon  his  ideas  —  his  knowledge,  his  opinions. 


446      MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

is  its  gratification.  Motive  or  appetite  (its  next  higher 
phase)  is  sated  by  its  own  activity,  which  consumes  it. 
The  function  of  intellection  in  respect  to  motive  is  solely 
to  channel  it,  and,  in  this  sense,  thereby  to  direct  it. 
When  we  speak  of  motor-education,  we  mean  digging 
channels  (in  psychological  terms,  "forming  habits;"  in 
pedagogical,  "drilling")  through  which  motivation  may 
expend  itself  facilely. 

Motivation  measures  energy,  —  it  measures  exactly 
that  amount  of  energy  which  the  body  produces  in  excess 
of  its  own  interngj  requirements.  Motivation  ceases  in 
sleep.  Then  the  body  functions  without  motivation  as  it 
does  without  consciousness,  purely  (if  the  sleep  be  per- 
fect) as  a  physical  mechanism.  Rational  processes  can 
neither  add  to  nor  detract  from  motives.  They  can  only 
express  them. 

The  primary  motives  of  human  life,  manifest  in  the 
child,  tend  to  its  self-preservation.  They  have  an  air  of 
self-regard  which  grows  by  the  purification  of  the  intel- 
lect into  self-respect.  Self-reliance,  independence,  free- 
dom, defiance,  pride,  avarice,  insolence,  arrogance,  an- 
archy, and  outlawry  are  all  forms  and  powers  of  the 
motive  to  live. 

There  are  other  primary  motives,  not  manifest  until 
adolescence  sets  in :  these  tend  to  self-reproduction. 
They  have  a  note  of  ecstasy,  a  tone  of  auto-intoxication. 
Of  these  motives,  the  first  is  to  please  the  other  sex,  not 
as  individuals  but  as  a  kind  or  class.  The  second  is  the 
personal  sex-motive,  to  continue  life  beyond  death  in 
a  new  generation.  Vanity,  conceit,  egoism,  lust,  love, 
self-devotion,  altruism,  and  self-sacrifice  are  all  forms  and 
powers  of  this  motive  to  live  again. 

The  last  of  the  primary  motives  manifest  themselves 
in  the  established  adult  life  and  tend  to  race-continuance. 
They  inhibit  impulses  in  the  interest  of  habits.  They 
convert  the  play-spirit  into  working-force.  They  con- 


THE   NATURAL   MAN  447 

serve  what  is,  banking  up  vitality,  as  it  were,  in  reser- 
voirs. They  centre  upon  self,  but  swing  a  periphery 
through  society.  From  an  egotism  not  less  real  than  that 
of  hunger  or  that  of  sexual  desire,  they  widen  out  into  an 
altruism  that  establishes  the  family  and  maintains  the 
nation  as  a  society,  and  thereby  continues  the  race. 

These  primary  motives  well  up  in  the  soul  of  every 
healthy  man  and  woman,  and  can  scarcely  be  suppressed 
by  even  the  worst  system  of  formal  education,  so  called. 

These  primary  motives  spring  out  of  mere  life.  Cer- 
tain other  motives  spring  from  life  in  excess  of  the  pre- 
sent needs  of  the  body.  Of  these  other  motives,  —  which 
may  be  called,  arbitrarily,  "secondary"  motives,  —  two 
are  important.  To  get  rid  of  surplus  energy,  we  play. 
In  order  to  acquire  more  upon  which  to  use  our  surplus 
energy,  we  accumulate  property.  There  are  other  ex- 
planations of  the  play-spirit  and  of  the  property-lust. 
These  explanations  are  usually  derived  from  intellectual 
or  affective  processes.  But  the  true  explanations  are  to 
be  found  in  the  motor-processes.  We  play  lest  we  rack 
to  pieces,  burn  up,  with  too  much  energy.  We  play  in 
order  to  get  tired.1 

Fighting  is  not  so  much  universal  animal  motive  as 
a  special  pre-human  instinct.  Often  it  springs  from  fear, 
which  is  a  phase  of  the  reverse  motive  to  live.  There 
is  a  love  of  fighting  that  springs  from  excess  energy, 
the  passion  for  adventure  ;  there  is  a  fighting  that  is 
a  purely  atavistic  gloating  over  blood  ;  there  is  a  fighting 

1  There  is,  it  would  seem,  a  physiological  explanation  of  the  need,  and 
the  natural  instinct,  to  play.  The  body  in  its  normal  condition  produces 
far  more  energy  than  it  really  needs.  Heart,  lungs,  liver,  have  large  mar- 
gins of  safety.  The  cells  and  tissues,  the  blood-current,  the  corpuscles,  the 
nerve-ganglia,  the  pia  mater,  and  all  other  working  and  thinking  parts 
exceed  by  two,  by  ten,  times  the  actual  requirement,  if  keeping  alive  were 
the  sole  object.  The  blood  must  be  oxygenated  and  intoxicated  in  order  to 
reduce  man  below  the  peril  of  excessive,  explosive,  ecstatic,  hysterical 
vigor.  In  childhood,  play  ;  in  manhood,  work,  solves  the  difficulty. 


44§       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

that  witnesses  simple  self-reliance ;  and  there  is  a  fight- 
ing that  is  the  bitterness  of  pride. 

Outside  idiocy  and  imbecility,  an  entirely  uneducated 
soul  cannot  exist  in  civilization.  The  mere  presence  and 
visible  activity  of  educated  men  in  society  educates  the 
unschooled  man.  But  to  be  essentially  uneducated  is  to 
be  the  prey  of  motives,  unenlightened  by  ideals,  undi- 
rected by  principles.  That  uneducated  men  live  as  nobly 
as  they  do  is  evidence  of  the  essential  worth  of  these 
simple  human  motives.  Knowing  nothing  of  values, 
rationally  determined,  they  trust  their  motives  to  bring 
them  to  the  goal  of  honor.1 

The  genetic  progress  of  the  natural  man  is  to  grow 
and  to  be  strong,  to  eat,  to  sleep,  to  play,  to  acquire ; 
after  puberty,  to  grow  yet  more,  to  delight  in  the  other 
half  of  mankind,  to  desire,  and  to  procreate ;  and  in  full 
manhood  to  work,  to  love  children,  to  desire  the  com- 
mon good,  and  to  enjoy  exhilaration  that  fatigue  may  give 
surcease  of  life  in  sleep.2  There  is  an  air  of  automatism 
in  all  this,  because  reason  in  it  is  wholly  subordinate 
to  motivation,  the  intellect  is  a  mere  tool  of  desire, 
and  affection  is  accidentally  rather  than  intentionally, 
deliberately,  and  consciously  gratified. 

Over  such  men  the  storm  of  the  world  passes  un- 
known. They  are  as  the  deep  water  below  the  ocean 
waves.  They  know  not  any  wind  or  the  extreme  cold  ; 
but  they  know  also  little  of  the  sunlight  and  of  the 
warmth  of  life.  For  them,  history  and  culture  are  almost 
as  nothing ;  but  they  have,  in  loin  and  womb,  the  future 

1  It  is  a  striking  confirmation  of  the  essential  goodness  of  human  nature 
that  we  distrust  the  morals  of  educated  men  far  more  than  we  do  those 
of  the  uneducated.  We  expect  the  educated  to  act  skillfully  and  to  their 
own  advantage,  the  uneducated  to  act  foolishly  but  with  intent  for  the 
general  welfare. 

4  "  The  strength  of  motive  wanes  when  the  protesting  organism  is 
forced  to  adapt  itself  to  bad  air,  bad  light,  fixed  position,  and  routine  occu- 
pation."—  PATTEN,  New  Basis  of  Civilization,  p.  122. 


THE   NATURAL   MAN  449 

of  the  body  and  brain  of  humanity.  They  appear  in 
annal,  chronicle,  history  as  "  the  people  ;  "  and  so  they 
are  ;  and  so  we  are.  In  the  last  analysis,  ideals,  values, 
all  manner  of  cultures  constitute  but  little  more  than 
a  veneer.  The  instincts,  motives,  habits  of  humanity  are 
the  solid  timber. 

And  these  are  they  who  build  the  city  and  multiply 
the  citizens,  totally  failing  to  understand  what  the  city  is, 
but  quickly  appreciating  by  sympathy  what  the  city  may 
be.  For  between  the  real  city  and  the  ideal  city  of  the 
plain  natural  man  and  of  the  dreamer,  there  is  a  terrible 
difference.1  The  real  city  is  a  pulsating  social  neurosis, 
a  fever  of  activity  of  soul  and  of  body,  a  vast  congeries  of 
associated,  concatenating,  and  opposing  forces,  —  of  tra- 
ditions, habits,  ideals,  desires, — a  stormy  welter  upon 
the  sea  of  humanity,  an  eddy  growing  into  a  maelstrom, 
at  once  the  best  and  the  worst  of  human  products,  but 
always  centrifugal  from  God  in  Nature  and  centripetal 
of  God  in  man.  The  real  city  is  the  torment  of  the  in- 
dividual who  would  preserve  his  individuality  and  the 
torture  of  society  that  would  preserve  its  solidarity,  for  it 
separates  the  sheep  from  the  goats,  overpays  and  over- 
punishes  ;  and  it  rings  the  peculiar  man,  be  he  good  or 
bad,  with  its  adamantine  wall  of  conformity.  The  real  city 
is  the  paradise  of  the  parasitic  classes,  rich  and  poor, 
whose  generations,  however,  it  destroys  that  the  normal 
man  may  prevail ;  here  the  idler  finds  companionship 
which  is  happiness.  And  it  is  the  Inferno  (literally)  of 
the  producing  classes,  whom  it  confines  at  their  tasks 
of  wealth-creating  and  child-rearing  ;  it  so  confines  them 
by  visible  bounds  of  distance  and  time  to  get  beyond  its 
limits,  and  by  the  invisible  bands  of  the  tradition  that 

1  This  is  said  soberly.  Terror  is  the  mood  of  the  countryman  suddenly 
transported  into  and  lost  in  the  great  city.  It  shocks  him.  Because  Gorky 
is  in  soul  a  rustic  and  fears  the  metropolis,  he  hates  New  York  and  Lon- 
don. 


450       MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

human  companionship — gregariousness  —  is  the  chief 
delight  of  life,  and  of  the  law  that  rents,  interests,  and 
profits  shall  leave  the  laborer  only  the  wages  required  for 
life  itself. 1  The  real  city  is  entirely  artificial  and  mainly 
false.2  It  is  a  flux  of  superstitions,  gyrating  upon  a  central 
truth,  which  is  that  by  working  together  men  can  and 
do  defeat  the  law  of  diminishing  returns.  Therefore,  the 
natural  men  have  established  these  immense  workhouses. 
Not  comprehending  the  social  institutions,  or  human 
life  at  its  best,  they  have  totally  neglected  the  interests 
of  women  and  children,  have  indeed  perverted  women 
from  their  natural  uses  and  have  made  of  them  house- 
animals  and  shop-slaves. 

The  city  proposes  the  defeat  of  all  the  laws  of  Nature. 
It  ignores  seasons  and  periods  ;  forever  it  is  sowing,  cul- 
tivating, reaping,  harvesting.  In  the  city,  summer  and 
winter,  manufacture  —  the  work  of  human  hands  upon 
raw  materials  —  goes  on  ceaselessly,  day  and  night,  year 
in  and  year  out.  The  city  never  rests.  In  the  terms  of 
human  history,  the  city  from  Thebes  and  Nineveh  to 
London  and  Chicago  is  the  death-knell  .of  physical 
humanity. 

But  the  city  is  destiny.  It  absorbs  nation  after  nation, 
corrupts  them,  and  dies  when  they  die,  and  because  they 
die.  The  city  knows  not  patriotism  :  who  can  love  the 
tenement  of  his  nativity  ?  The  city  is  the  path  by  which 
every  people  passes  forward  to  the  gates  of  its  own  death. 
And  why  ?  Because  the  city  is  in  truth  the  imperishable, 
the  unattained  ideal  of  the  human  race,  which  would  build 
somewhere  at  some  time  "  the  city  of  God."  3 

1  This  law  is  challenged  by  modern  economists.   Cf.  Le  Rossignol, 
Orthodox  Socialism  ;  Mayo-Smith,  Statistics  and  Economics. 

2  Cf.    Chancellor,  "The   Educational  Outlook,"  Journal  of  Pedagogy, 
March,  1907. 

3  We  think  that   because  America  is  an  empire  of  great  cities,  it  will 
not  repeat  the  history  of  Italy,  which  evolved  Rome  only,  of  England  with 
its  London,  of  France  with  its  Paris.   It  is  a  strange  delusion.   The  pre- 


THE   NATURAL   MAN  451 

In  the  ideal  city,  there  is  no  lost  man,  no  lost  child, 
no  lost  idea,  no  lost  feeling,  no  lost  goods.  Whatever  is, 
counts.  Society  spells  sanity.  The  multitude  specializes, 
assists,  economizes. 

The  human  error  in  respect  to  the  city  has  been  in 
confusing  it  with  the  open  country  and  in  not  seeing  the 
entire  incongruity  between  their  conditions.  The  open 
country  is  for  growing  things,  the  city  is  for  making 
things.  Between  the  open  country  and  the  city  there 
must  be  the  village,  whose  purpose  is  consuming  things. 
The  field  and  the  factory  are  generally  incompatible. 
Not  less  incompatible  with  either  is  the  home.  Before 
the  millennial  state  is  reached,  we  have  yet  much  to  learn 
of  the  city,  of  the  hamlet,  and  of  the  field. 

There  is  no  room  for  homes  in  any  city  as  such.  Nor 
should  the  environs,  the  suburbs,  of  the  city  be  given 
over  to  homes.  Nor  can  they  be.  Homes  cannot  be 
created  in  the  atmosphere  or  neighborhood  of  factories 
and  shops. 

The  mongrel  city  structure  —  store  below,  dwelling  above, 
stable  for  horses  in  the  short  back  lot  —  is  precisely  the  worst 
device  of  mankind  for  its  own  ruin  via  the  ruin  of  the  lives 
of  women  and  of  children.  Tenement  and  flat  advertise  the 
incompetence  and  the  indifference  of  humanity  in  respect 
to  present  morals  and  to  future  health.  The  saddest  children 
I  know  are  the  toddlers  confined  to  a  room  or  two  in  city  flats. 
And  there  are  thousands  of  them,  thousands  and  thousands. 
They  are  even  sadder  children  than  the  little  wayfarers  in 
some  remote,  lost  country  districts,  one  house  or  less  to  the 
square  mile. 

The  plight  of  the  man  in  the  city — literally  the  civilized 
man  —  is  worse  than  that  of  the  man  in  the  open  country ; 
yet  not  much.  Into  the  rural  districts  we  are  sending  the 

sence  of  many  cities  but  hastens  the  physical  degeneracy  and  the  social 
devolution.  True  empire  is  always  rural  because  it  is  always  founded 
upon  health  and  individual  freedom. 


452       MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

mails  with  the  newspaper,  the  insurance  agent,  the 
religious  missionary,  the  politician,  the  tax  collector,  the 
book  canvasser,  and  the  telephone  line.  We  are  lifting 
the  lost  family  into  social  relations,  we  are  enlightening 
man,  woman,  and  child  with  knowledge. 

The  redemption  of  the  countryman  by  science  and  by 
art  is  indeed  a  harder  problem  than  the  redemption  of 
the  city  man.  The  latter  problem  is  little  more  than  a 
matter  of  dollars  and  cents  — for  the  man  of  the  city  has 
learned  the  value  of  the  wisdom  of  collective  humanity 
and  is  respectful,  if  not  reverent,  of  public  opinion  and  of 
expert  counsel. 

In  the  light  of  these  simplest  of  suggestions  regarding 
the  average  or  typical  natural  man  of  city  and  of  country, 
with  no  thought  of  seeking  to  expound  the  meaning  of 
society  and  of  solitude,  I  propose  to  cite  wherein  the 
uninstructed  and  the  unintelligent  (and  therefore  neces- 
sarily the  inefficient,  unmoral,  and  uneducated)  absolutely 
fail  in  the  presence  of  the  institutions  of  civilization.  My 
intention  is  to  display  in  hard  lines  and  in  high  lights 
why  the  ignorant  prevent  the  success  of  the  educated 
in  promptly  spreading  civilization  through  all  grades  of 
humanity. 

I  propose  the  problem  of  the  resistance  of  humanity 
to  culture.  And  my  thesis  here l  is  that  genius  and  talent 
cannot  convert  humanity  quickly  to  the  best  because 
dullness  and  mediocrity,  their  antipodes,  actively  (not 
passively)  resist  conversion  and  regeneration.  Compre- 
hension of  the  conditions  of  a  civilization  in  flux  involves 
willingness  to  think  as  well  as  efficiency  in  thinking  and 
ideas  with  which  to  think ;  and  willingness  to  think  is 
pure  motivation.  In  some,  curiosity  and  reflection  (that 

1  My  general  thesis  is  in  the  nature  of  a  plea  for  the  abatement  of  edu- 
cational obscurantism  and  formalism,  and  for  the  alleviation  of  such 
imperfections  of  civilization  as  are  remediable  by  education.  The  above 
minor  thesis  is  the  counter  side  or  obverse  of  the  main  proposition. 


THE   NATURAL   MAN  453 

is,  willing  to  think)  produce  the  thinking  condition  of  the 
soul,  while  in  others  a  civilized  morality,  a  sense  of  social 
duty  in  the  presence  of  others  with  needs  and  interests, 
produces  thought.  Natural  powers  lead  to  spontaneous 
thinking ;  acquired  powers  (dug  and  cultivated  out  of 
incurious,  immobile,  indifferent  wits)  lead  to  artificial, 
deliberate  thinking. 

In  society,  a  few  are  really  radiant ;  many  may  acquire 
radiance ; 1  many  others  are  neutral  or  resistant  to  radi- 
ance. 

The  natural  man  in  city  and  in  country  follows  the  line 
of  least  resistance :  that  is,  expresses  his  instincts  and 
functions  psychically  according  to  traditions  and  phys- 
ically according  to  habits.  Lacking  ingenuity  save  in  its 
lowest  form  of  deceit,2  he  neglects  tool  and  method  and 
moves  directly,  brutally  (like  a  brute),  to  his  desired  end. 

1  There  are  in  Nature  radio-active  elements,  whose  radiance  is  due  not 
to  inherent  quality  but  to  the  recent  presence  of  radium.   Their  quality  is 
a  kind  of  pseudo-radiance  by  no  means  to  be  contemned,  yet  impermanent 
and  unreliable.  (Duncan,  The  New  Knowledge,  p.  112.)    So  in  human  so- 
ciety, we  see  men  vitalized  by  the  presence  of  a  leader,  who  teaches  them 
his  ideas  and  charges  them,  as  it  were,  with  his  own  enthusiasm.   The 
work  of  an  educator  differs  from  that  of  the  leader  in  that  the  results  of 
the  former  are  permanent.   To  continue  the  analogy :  The  chemist  finds 
in  pitchblende  the  crystals  of  true  chloride  of  radium,  which  is  education  ; 
while  the  physicist  brings  his  baser  materials  near  the  crystals,  which  is 
inspiration.   The  leader  inspires  his  followers,  —  breathes  his  breath  into 
them,  and  they  breathe  well  as  long  as  he  breathes  for  them  and  in  them. 
The  educator  regenerates  his  disciples ;  and  they  develop  a  new  life  in 
themselves,  often  a  better  life  than  he  himself  could  live. 

2  "  Shrewdness,  tact,  policy,  demagog}',  diplomacy,  strategy,  are  only 
so  many  applications  of  the  one  principle,  only  so  many  varying  manifesta- 
tions of  the  primary  intellectual  faculty  under  correspondingly  changed 
circumstances.  .  .  .  This  idea  lurks  in  all  such  words  as  cunning,  crafty, 
artful,  wily,  arch,  tricky,  sly,  astute,  designing,  intriguing,  smart,  shrewd, 
sharp.  ...  So  much  is  deception  the  essence  of  the  principle  that,  as  a 
rule,  the  greater  the  deception  the  greater  is  the  success.  .  .  .    The  prime- 
val intellect  was  developed  for  no  other  purpose  than  as  an  instrument  of 
protection  from  danger."   Ward,  Psychic  Factors  of  Civilization,  pp.  161, 
163,  164,  165. 


454       MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

When  obstacles  turn  him  aside  from  his  end,  he  does  not 
see  how  to  go  around,  but  quits.  When  he  does  not  quit, 
but  persists  by  indirection  and  circuitousness,  then  it 
is  that  defeat  may  educate  him.  He  may  discover  that 
victory  is  the  issue  of  method.  Defeat  can  educate  only 
one  who  is  potentially  capable  of  education.  Such  an  one 
is  overcoming  Nature  and  entering  into  human  nature, 
which  in  its  essence  is  victory  over  Nature. 

Nature  projects  the  field  and  the  camp,1  human  nature 
erects  the  farm  and  the  house  and  the  city,  all  of  them 
products  of  nurture  and  of  culture. 

We  may,  for  convenience,  divide  men  into  citizens  and 
barbarians.2  The  heathen 3  and  the  pagan,4  the  rustics 
and  the  ruralists,5  have  been  in  all  ages  and  in  all  lands 
the  subject  for  the  ridicule,  mockery,  and  scorn  of  the 
citizens  ;  and  they  have  always  looked  with  envy  and  with 
awe  upon  the  more  refined,  the  polite8  denizens  of  the 
cities.7  Therefore,  "  citizen  "  has  become  a  password,  an 
introduction,  and  "  barbarian  "  and  "  rustic  "  are  bywords 
and  warnings,  though  in  truth  the  stout  yet  gentle,  the 
just  yet  charitable,  are  always  best  when  country-bred. 

But  with  the  disappearance  of  walled  towns  and  of 
passports,  of  serfdom,  of  guilds,  and  of  lords  and  clients, 
the  rustics  have  entered  freely  into  the  cities,  to  dwell 
there,  to  multiply,  and  not  to  perceive  the  manner  and 
the  necessities  of  city  life.8  And  with  the  appearance  of 

1  The  tale  of  the  Dark  Ages  is  that  of  the  war  between  camp  and  city, 
between  horde  and  society. 

a  "  Foreigners,"  from  pdp&apoi,  the  heavy-witted,  the  non-Hellenes  ; 
peoples  not  intelligible,  the  rude  and  weighted  folk;  the  brave,  savage, 
wild;  the  uncivilized,  the  non-citizens. 

8  Heath  from  heth,  the  waste  land  covered  with  shrubs  and  with  weeds. 

*  Pagus,  the  fenced-out  country. 

6  Rus,  the  country,  the  space  for  field  and  for  wood,  the  non-city. 

6  Tl6\is,  city,  the  centre,  the  many-in-one  ;  the  strong  State. 

7  The  circled,  consolidated,  protected  towns. 

8  This,  I  believe,  is  the  cause  of  the  mournful  conviction  of  Spencer, 


THE   NATURAL   MAN  455 

capitalism  and  of  wage-incomes,  the  privileged  citizens 
"  to  the  manner  born  "  have  encouraged  the  multiplication 
of  these  men  forced  to  labor  without  equally  promoting 
their  intelligent  adjustment  to  city  conditions. 

At  the  present  time,  not  a  few  prosperous  citizens  are 
moving  out  into  the  country  for  summer  sojourn  and  for 
suburban  residence,  replacing  the  lost  barons  whose  lord- 
ship disappeared  with  the  feudalism  of  the  old  regime. 

It  may  be  said  that  of  that  old  regime,  America  knows  no- 
thing. The  South  reproduced  it  in  an  extreme  form  ;  and  the 
freed  colored  slaves  and  their  children  are  repeating  the  his- 
toric march  of  agricultural  laborers  into  the  cities.  And  every- 
where, North,  South,  and  West,  the  old  inherited  mentality, 
persisting  through  generations,  reproduces  in  this  age  the  old 
characteristics  of  the  citizens  and  of  the  barbarians,  for  the 
souls  of  men  are  general  and  historic,  not  special  and  new- 
created. 

Moreover,  there  is  a  persistent  devolution  of  character,  a 
tendency  to  revert,  in  us  all :  behind  every  man,  though  his 
city  ancestry  be  of  five  or  fifteen  generations,  there  are  the 
hundreds  of  generations  before  ever  cities  were.  At  last,  there 
is  something  of  atavism,  of  barbarism,  of  savagery,  of  purest 
animalism  in  us  all. 

What,  then,  are  the  motives,  the  ideals,  and  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  barbarian  in  the  city  in  the  presence  of  the 
social  institutions  ? 

The  deepest  motive  is  to  live,  to  enjoy  living.  The 
barbarian,  the  natural  man,  would  get  immediately,  would 
seize  quickly,  whatever  offers  most  plainly  the  pleasures 
of  life.  He  desires  not  work  for  wages,  not  even  wages  for 

expressed  in  1902, that  "the  world  is  returning  to  barbarism,"  is  indeed 
proceeding  "  to  universal  decay."  Loliee,  Short  History  of  Comparative 
Literature,  p.  361.  Similarly,  because  we  are  now  trying  to  educate  all, 
the  clever  and  the  dull,  some  educators  think  that  either  humanity  is  be- 
coming inferior  or  teaching  is  growing  poorer.  It  is  an  illusion  of  imper- 
fect social  knowledge.  The  error  of  Spencer  was  due  to  the  decline  of 
his  powers. 


456      MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

work,  but  thematerial  things  themselves.  And  hereaches 
for  them  vigorously,  violently,  to  the  full  measure  of  his 
strength  and  for  so  long  as  his  strength  persists.  The 
barbarian  child  wishes  to  be  a  man  speedily ;  and  the 
barbarian  father  wishes  to  throw  off  as  early  as  possible 
the  burden  of  his  child. 

From  this  motive  to  live  as  easily  and  as  exuberantly 
as  possible  spring  all  manner  of  crimes  and  of  sins.1  By 
reason  of  these  offenses  against  morals,  certain  of  our 
barbarians  degenerate  into  savages.  Of  all  dangerous 
men,  the  city  savages  are  the  worst.  These  are  not  merely 
slum-denizens  :  they  are  the  slum-makers,  the  producers 
of  the  vices  and  of  the  diseases  because  of  which  the 
word  "  slum  "  breathes  horror.  The  ideal  of  the  "  citi- 
savage"  is  "to  live  easy:"  he  admires  "the  powers  that 
prey  : "  he  becomes  such  a  power.  His  very  thought  and 
forethought  make  him  terrible.  He  who  challenges  this 
ideal  of  enjoyment  without  desert  is  a  critic  to  be  ignored 
and  avoided :  he  who  fights  it  is  an  enemy  to  be  destroyed. 
The  country  can  produce  no  man  so  dangerous  as  this 
"  citi-savage,"  who  perverts  the  advantages  of  society  to 
its  own  destruction.  The  rural  savage  can  do  but  little 
harm  compared  with  him  who  is  ensphered  in  a  crowd. 

What  is  the  meaning  of  the  social  institutions  to  the 
barbarian  ?  Absolutely  nothing  except  the  immediate 
concrete  service  that  these  agencies  can  render  in  time 
of  need.  The  barbarian  wants  property, — gets  it,  neg- 

1  We  think  that  we  have  solved  some,  if  not  all,  of  the  problems  of 
the  city.  In  the  concrete  instance  of  the  horse  (for  example),  we  are  partly 
savage,  partly  barbarous.  We  drive  him  on  hard  and  slippery  pavements, 
shoe  him  with  iron,  torture  him  with  check-rein,  overload  him,  and  tie  in 
stalls,  often  for  days  at  a  time,  this  roaming,  browsing,  play-loving  crea- 
ture. In  the  country  we  cage  him  behind  city-manufactured  barbed-wire 
fences,  careless  of  accident,  pain,  and  maiming. 

This  is  a  trifling  matter,  perhaps  ;  but  it  is  an  incident  to  the  general 
historic  demonstration  that  the  city  for  residence,  for  manufacture,  for 
art,  for  commerce,  has  presented  an  insoluble  problem. 


THE   NATURAL   MAN  457 

lects  it,  squanders  it.  He  wants  a  wife  ;  but  in  the  hour 
of  stress  deserts  her  and  the  children  and  betakes  him- 
self elsewhere.  He  wants  religion, —  when  he  is  sick; 
but  he  is  no  supporter  of  church  or  of  charities.  He  for- 
gets that  there  is  a  hospital  or  a  dispensary,  until  in  the 
hour  of  emergency  it  supplies  his  own  need.  He  wants 
government  and  the  police  when  overtaken  by  a  stronger 
or  a  shrewder  man  ;  but  he  fights  taxation.  As  for  all 
the  remoter  and  subtler  institutions,  —  occupation,  edu- 
cation, culture,  aesthetic  amusement,  art,  science, — the 
true  barbarian  must  be  drafted  into  them  ;  for  they  call 
for  what  he  does  not  possess,  trained  intelligence,  social 
efficiency,  tested  morals. 

Abolish  this  barbarian,  and  the  supply  of  and  the  de- 
mand for  strong  drink,  drugs,  police-service,  prostitution, 
alms,  cease  together. 

Products  that  sell  for  money  are  not  synonymous  with  the 
arts  of  civilization.  Only  barbarians  make  and  sell  things  that 
work  harm  to  others,  or  things  that  in  their  making  injure 
the  makers.1 

Only  the  civilized  can  see  that  every  act  or  product  that  is 
good  is  good  upon  the  test  of  its  quantity  of  service  to  the 
lives  of  one's  fellow  men,  now  or  in  the  years  to  come.  The 
test  is  the  amount  of  living  and  the  number  of  lives  that  the 
act  or  product  helps. 

What  are  the  genuine  barbarian  principles  ?   We  all 

1  We  hear  much  these  days  of  "  the  exploitation  of  the  poor  by  the  rich  " 
and  of  "  the  expropriation  of  the  product  of  labor  by  capital."  These  are 
Socialist  phrases,  maxims  of  the  cult  that  may  yet  become  a  "religion." 
Far  worse  than  these  conditions  are  imagined  to  be  is  the  perversion  of 
labor  and  of  capital  to  the  production  of  things  —  drinks,  dramas,  vices 
—  that  destroy  mankind.  This  deliberate  turning  of  men  to  their  own 
destruction  by  means  of  their  own  labor  and  wealth  is  precisely  the  worst 
feature  of  the  modern  yet  passing  economic  regime.  For  it,  both  rich  and 
poor,  employers  and  employed,  are  responsible.  It  is  no  more  true  that 
a  poor  man  must  work  for  wages  in  such  an  enterprise  lest  he  die,  than 
that  the  rich  man  must  use  his  capital  for  profit  in  the  enterprise  lest  it 
die.  Let  them  both  die.  They  cumber,  they  corrupt,  the  ground. 


458       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

know  them.  To  try  to  do  right  is  to  make  war  upon  the 
barbarism  in  ourselves. 

Parasitism  is  a  barbarian  principle  :  to  get  as  much  and 
to  give  as  little  as  possible. 

Ecstasy  is  a  barbarian  principle :  to  feel  too  happy  or 
to  be  too  angry  to  be  able  to  think. 

Indolence  is  a  barbarian  principle  :  to  care  not  whether 
this  world  of  our  inheritance  be  set  in  order. 

Childlessness  is  a  barbarian  principle :  to  live  indiffer- 
ent to  the  succession  of  humanity  upon  the  earth.1 

Indifference  is  a  barbarian  principle :  to'  ignore  the 
possibility  of  truth  and  the  obligation  to  promote  the 
knowledge  and  the  efficiency  of  truth. 

Fear  is  a  barbarian  principle ; 2  and  the  desire  to  create 
fear,  likewise.  Fear  contemplates  consequences,  not  duty. 

All  sense-gratifications,  "the  lust  of  the  eye,"  "the 
pride  of  life,"  have  in  them  barbarous  colors  and  are 
perilous. 

There  are  other  barbarian  principles  :  impatience  that 
cannot  wait  for  events  and  work  for  results ;  remorse 
that  regrets  the  irrecoverable  past  ;3  obstinacy  that  pre- 
fers to  will  and  to  stand  rather  than  to  think  and  to  move  ; 
superstition  that  mistakes  habits  of  ideation  for  laws  of 
truth  ;  particularism  that  fixes  attention  upon  items  ;  and 
diffusiveness  that  dissipates  attention  and  refuses  to 
organize  experience.  The  barbarian  is  essentially  half- 

1  Not  mere  physical  parentage,  but  the  true  parentage  of  loving  women 
and  children  and  building  families.  To  be  a  parent  is  not  an  event,  but  a 
life.  There  are  true  parents  whose  parentage  is  purely  spiritual,  to  whose 
ministry  millions  owe  their  souls. 

a  "  Perfect  love  casteth  out  fear,  because  fear  hath  torment.  He  that 
feareth  is  not  made  perfect  in  love."  John,  I  Epistle,\v,  18.  "True  no- 
bility is  exempt  from  fear."  Shakespeare,  II  Henry  VI,  iv,  i,  129. 

8  More  clearly  than  any  other  thinker,  Goethe  saw  the  importance  of  the 
faith  in  regeneration  —  that  "men  may  rise,"  as  Tennyson  said,  "on  step- 
ping-stones of  their  dead  selves  to  higher  things."  It  is  the  characteristic 
ethical  belief  of  modern  times,  the  essential  meaning  of  Faust. 


THE   NATURAL   MAN  459 

civilized,  incompletely  educated,  neither  wise  nor  foolish. 
The  idea  controls  the  savage  ;  while  the  civilized  controls 
and  chooses  ideas.  The  intermediate  barbarian  has  ob- 
session and  persistency  of  ideas  with  haphazard  varia- 
tions that  bewilder  him.  The  savage  is  not  bewildered  : 
he  is  wild.  The  civilized  is  not  bewildered  :  he  is  serene.1 

All  these  barbarian  principles  contribute  to  the  love  of 
warfare,  the  universal  barbarism.  Fighting  is  savagery ; 
war  and  preparation  for  war,  militant  patriotism,  and  the 
lust  of  dominion  are  barbarism,  which  is  deliberate, 
organized,  purposeful  where  savagery  is  impulsive,  hap- 
hazard, blind. 

The  city  is  more  in  danger  from  barbarians  to-day  than 
is  the  open  country  itself. 

The  city  millionaire  cannot  be  wholly  a  barbarian,  because 
he  values  property,  which  is  the  beginning  of  civilization. 
When  he  spends  no  more  of  his  income  upon  himself  than  is 
good,  really  good  for  himself,  when  he  cherishes  his  family, 
when  he  spends,  gives,  or  invests  the  rest  of  his  income  for 
the  profit  of  other  men,  he  is  substantially  civilized. 

The  country  farmer  cannot  be  wholly  a  barbarian,  for  a 
well-kept  farm  is  the  reduction  of  the  field  to  the  use  of  men  : 
good  farming  is  applied  science.  When  to  the  order  in  which 
he  tries  to  set  his  part  of  the  earth  he  adds  national  support 
of  the  social  institutions,  though  he  be  isolated  in  the  body, 
from  the  city,  he  is  a  true  citizen  of  the  nation. 

The  true  barbarian  has  but  a  short  life.  In  the  city, 
his  presence,  his  activity,  his  sickness,  and  his  death  men- 
ace the  lives  of  his  fellow  men.  To  abolish  him  is  the 
mission  of  education. 

The  half -barbarian,  who  multiplies  his  offspring  when 

1  The  principle  within  these  propositions  is  that  his  ideas,  not  his  ex- 
ternal conditions  or  even  his  individual  manifestations,  cause  the  savage. 
I  have  seen  Kaffirs  from  Africa  converted  into  Americans  within  but  a 
few  years  by  the  substitution  of  ideas.  No  doubt  the  savage  or  barbarian 
in  the  Americanized  Kaffir  is  only  asleep;  but  while  the  old  ideas  sleep, 
there  is  a  new  active  personality. 


460       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

he  has  no  property  to  employ  in  caring  for  them  and  no 
culture  to  transmit  by  inculcation  or  by  heredity,  is  not 
so  much  a  menace  to  society  as  an  invitation  for  the  in- 
telligent and  the  virtuous  to  be  active  in  completing  his 
redemption  from  barbarism.  To  complete  his  civilizing 
is  the  mission  of  education. 

As  for  the  civilized,  the  price  of  their  continuance  in 
civilization  is  persistence  in  education  and  in  educational 
service. 

The  civilized  must  deal,  however,  with  men  who  are 
worse  than  the  barbarians,  the  uncivilized,  for  there  are 
present  in  civilization  the  perverters  of  all  for  which  at 
its  best  civilization  stands.  These  perverters  of  the  good, 
these  anti-civilized,  these  enemies  of  humanity  and  of  in- 
dividual men,  these  destroyers  of  themselves  turn  life  to 
its  own  ruin,  make  it  hateful.  These  are  not  barbarians 
forerunning  a  gentle  folk  of  later  times  ;  but  gentle  folk 
themselves  turning  what  is  good  in  their  natures  into 
evil.  They  manifest  characteristic  sins  that  require  in- 
telligence, activity,  skill,  even  certain  moral  qualities  for 
their  entire  accomplishment.  Their  deeds  are  incredible 
to  the  truly  civilized  because  incomprehensible  by  them  : 
between  the  vulgar  and  the  polite  and  gentle,  there  may 
be  sympathy ;  but  between  the  bad  and  the  good,  there 
can  be  and  is  only  antipathy. 

These  characteristic  sins  of  the  impolite  and  anti-civil 
are  lying,  promising,  betraying,  seducing,  assassinating  ; 
ingratitude,  oppression,  arrogance,  pride,  luxury,  —  all 
the  miserable  and  horrifying  tale  to  be  found  in  the 
Pentateuch,  in  the  Inferno,  and  in  certain  modern  litera- 
ture, for  Moses,1  Dante,2  Shakespeare,  and  Goethe  saw 
the  depravity  of  souls. 

1  This  is  not  to  assert  that  Moses  wrote  the  Pentateuch,  which  indeed 
records  his  own  death ;  but  that  he  revealed  the  motives  of  the  basest 
men,  the  anti-human.  Cf.  Leviticus,  xviii-xx. 

8  Dante  represents  falsifiers  and  traitors  Us  maniacs,  as  fever  victims, 


THE   NATURAL   MAN  461 

It  does  not  appear  that  education  or  religion  can  ever 
cure  their  ills  and  make  them  good.  Denunciation  has 
no  language  strong  enough  to  name  their  frauds  and 
hatreds  as  they  deserve.  It  may  be  that  their  sin  is  the 
Scriptural  "  blasphemy  against  the  Holy  Ghost,"  which 
cannot  be  forgiven.1 

Sometimes  their  crimes  are  against  masses  of  men, 
whole  communities,  whole  nations.  Whatever  their  pro- 
fessions, whatever  their  reputations,  whatever  glory  and 
splendor  attended  them  in  life  or  followed  them  after 
death,  the  civilized  and  gentle  may  not  rightfully  be  de- 
ceived by  the  apparent  success  of  the  plotters  against 
life.  These  uncivilized,  these  incivil,  these  unnatural, 
innatural,  obnatural,  take  certain  of  the  methods  and  ma- 
terials of  civilization  and  for  their  own  satisfaction  (sel- 
dom really  for  their  own  benefit)  use  them  to  the  injury 
of  society  and  to  the  destruction  of  civilization. 

In  consequence,  it  appears  that  the  refined  and  gentle 
folk  of  civilized  society  in  order  to  maintain  and  to  im- 
prove humanity  must  convert  the  natural  and  oppose  and 
destroy  the  unnatural :  in  other  words,  civilization  itself 
is  a  warfare  between  good  and  evil,  between  intelligence 
and  ignorance  (which  is  superstition,  not  vacuity),  be- 
tween invention  and  tradition,  between  charity  and  mal- 
ice, between  industry  and  wantonness,  between  virtue 
and  viciousness.  This  warfare  originates  in  motives, 
proceeds  by  intentions,  develops  purposes,  displays  ideals, 
and  ends  in  and  is  determined  by  principles  quantita- 
tively and  physically  represented  in  persons.  It  can  be 
understood  only  in  the  terms  of  a  concrete  psychology.2 

as  scale-clad,  as  ice-bound,  their  bodies  tenanted  by  fiends,  and  devoured 
by  the  "  Emperor  of  the  kingdom  dolorous."   Cf.  cantos  xxx,  xxxii-xxxiv. 

1  Jesus,  Luke,  Gosfel,  xii,  10.   Literally,  "  false  speaking  of  the  sacred 
breath  [of  life.]" 

2  e.  g.  Royce,  Outlines  of  Psychology  ;  Ward,  Psychic  Factors  in  Civil- 
ization. 


462       MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    I-N    EDUCATION 

Its  conflicts  arise  whenever  the  natural  man  goes  into 
the  city  or  the  citizen  proceeds  into  the  country ;  when- 
ever any  man  adds  to  his  life  a  new  social  relationship ; 
whenever  a  new  institution  is  established  or  a  new  ex- 
ample of  an  old  institution  ;  whenever  a  reform  is  taking 
place  in  an  individual  or  in  an  institution  or  in  a  com- 
munity, or  an  injury  is  being  done  ;  they  appear  and 
reappear  with  births  and  deaths,  with  changing  health, 
with  accidents.  And  the  more  the  conflicts  and  the 
severer,  the  greater  is  the  likelihood  of  progress,  which 
is  conditioned  by  changes  and  collisions  of  persons  and 
of  things. 

No  nation  will  ever  challenge  history  and  win  perman- 
ence until  it  establishes  not  merely  a  genuine  economic 
surplus  but  also  a  genuine  cultural  surplus.  It  must 
have  cities  for  manufacture,  for  mining,  and  for  trade ; 
but  no  more  for  habitation  than  for  agriculture.  Envi- 
roning the  cities  and  nucleating  the  open  country,  it  must 
have  hamlets  and  villages  for  neither  manufacture  nor 
agriculture,  but  for  habitation.  It  must  have  the  open 
country  for  forestry  and  for  agriculture,  but  not  for  hab- 
itation. The  wood  and  field  will  provide  raw  materials, 
the  city  will  manufacture  them,  and  the  village  will  con- 
sume the  products.  In  that  nation,  the  political  economy 
will  concern  itself  not  less  with  the  consumption  than 
with  the  production  of  goods ;  and  the  centre  of  the  civ- 
ilization will  be  the  end  of  the  economic  process,  the  home, 
which  will  draw  about  it  the  nourishing  and  supporting 
institutions  of  school  and  church. 

This  is  not  to  assert  that  the  home  will  continue  to  be 
a  scene  of  food-preparation  and  of  petty  household  labor 
by  every  mother,  house-confined  and  soul-starved.  But  it  is  to 
assert  that  every  family  must  have  a  separate  house  and 
"close,"  a  true  God's  acre,  isolated  from  neighbors,  where 
any  child  can  play  in  safety  in  the  hours  when  it  does  not  care 
to  play  in  group  or  "gang."  There  will  be  village  playgrounds 


THE   NATURAL   MAN  463 

and   communal   gymnasiums ;  but   there  must   also   be  the 
child's  own  garden,  pet  animals,  growing  trees. 

These  hamlets  will  be  the  clearing-houses,  as  it  were, 
between  ruralists  and  citizens,  to  the  end  that  whatever 
is  good  in  open  country  and  in  the  city  may  be  reconciled 
and  preserved,  and  whatever  is  bad  be  reduced  to  smallest 
measure. 

It  is  the  fancy  of  some  that  in  the  golden  age  of  the  future 
several  of  the  old  historic  institutions  —  family,  property, 
religion  —  will  disappear  as  anachronisms.  But  the  contrary 
is  the  case ;  they  will  benefit  all,  basing  the  lives  of  all,  hu- 
manizing all  in  any  "  golden  age."  There  will  be  more  homes, 
more  goods,  more  churches  than  ever. 

The  function  of  education  now  becomes  clear  ;  it  is  to 
lift  as  many  as  possible  to  the  highest  planes  possible. 
We  begin  in  savagery,  enter  into  barbarism,  proceed 
through  its  successive  stages,  reach  civilization,  and  pro- 
ceed in  it  as  far  as  we  may.  The  best  possible  education 
in  childhood  up  to  primary  adolescence  may  bring  the 
boy  out  of  savagery  into  barbarism.  The  best  possible 
education  in  adolescence  may  bring  the  youth  into  civil- 
ization, which  in  the  terms  of  the  individual  life  is  abil- 
ity to  contribute  to  the  social  institutions  and  willingness 
to  receive  from  them. 


CHAPTER   XXIII 

THE   WELL-EDUCATED    MAN 

A  good  man,  through  obscurest  aspiration, 
Has  still  an  instinct  of  the  one  true  way. 

GOBTHE,  Fatal,  Prologue,  Taylor,  transl. 

To  rule  the  vast  kingdom  of  Nature  is  the  absolute  duty  and  ultimate  destiny  of  man  ; 
at  present,  only  the  will  to  possess  and  to  administer  is  alone  wanting  to  this  half-hearted 
meddler  in  great  affairs.  —  LANKKSTER,  Kingdom  of  Man,  p.  31  (abridged). 

The  four  great  objects  of  all  success  are:  Health,  Love,  Honor,  Power.  These  desires 
are  of  the  essence  of  Man.  To  achieve  them,  we  move  upon  a  line  of  strategy,  deter- 
mined by  a  constant  and  a  variable.  The  indispensable  constant  is  Education.  Savoir 
c'est  apredire. —  REICH,  Success  in  Life,  pp.  9,  18,  19,  35  (abridged). 

THE  purpose  of  education  is  not  to  inculcate  in  individual 
men  the  ways  and  notions  of  civilization  that  these  may 
endure,  but  that  each  one  may  become  all  that  he  is 
capable  of  becoming.  To  say  that  logically,  therefore, 
education  might  develop  the  evil  in  man  as  well  as  the 
good  is  to  expose  two  premises,  clearly  false  to  the  faith 
of  man  in  himself  as  the  highest  example  he  knows  of 
the  works  of  God.  The  first  premise  is  that  the  soul 
of  man  is  at  least  partly  evil,  the  second  is  that  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  education  in  evil.  Against  the  dualistic 
philosophy  of  the  first  premise,  which  postulates  two 
gods,1  the  history  of  human  thought  protests  ;  against 
the  cynicism  and  shallowness  of  the  second  premise, 
reason  and  love  of  life  protest. 

Education  is  not  induction  into  conformity  with  the 
conventions  and  ideals  of  society ;  it  is  not  adjustment  to 

1  Ahriman  and  Ormuzd  of  the  ancient  Persia,  God  and  Satan  of  medi- 
aeval Christendom,  Baldur  and  Loki  of  the  primitive  Teutons.  "  Mani- 
cliieism  may  be  disavowed  in  words.  It  cannot  be  exiled  from  the  actual 
belief  of  mankind."  Stephen,  History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eight- 
eenth Century,  p.  15. 


THE  WELL-EDUCATED   MAN  465 

civilization.1  It  is  the  discovery  of  the  deepest  realities 
of  the  soul,  which  lie  nearest  to  the  Source  whence  all 
souls  spring.  In  a  paradoxical  sense,  education  is  evolu- 
tion out  of  conventions  and  common  ideals  by  passing 
through  and  above  them.  The  well-educated  man  knows 
what  the  half-educated  multitudes  know  and  more,  far 
more.  Mastering  their  prejudices,  he  escapes  out  of  them 
into  freedom  of  thought.  Certainly  Moses,  Socrates,  Jesus, 
Bruno,  Kant  did  not  conform  in  thought  to  their  times. 

The  end  of  formal  education  is  to  produce  the  well- 
educated  man,  whom  we  shall  know  by  his  qualities. 

The  well-educated  man  is  completely  educated,  rounded 
out,  built  up  solidly  from  the  foundation  of  him  to  the 
top.2 

He  knows  how  to  see  things  and  what  he  sees  :  more- 
over, he  can  see  through  appearance  to  realities.3 

He  remembers  what  he  has  seen  and  can  compare  the 
new  with  the  old. 

He  means  to  penetrate  behind  all  disguises  in  himself 
and  in  others  to  the  inmost  truth,  for  he  has  the  habit  of 
truth-seeking  :  therefore,  he  turns  away  from  dissemblers 
and  simulators.4 

He  interprets  his  own  experience  in  the  light  of  the 
experience  of  others ;  therefore,  he  is  anxious  to  know 
who  other  men  are,  and  reads  biography  and  fiction; 

1  Per  contra,  vide  Sterrett,  The  Freedom  of  Authority  ;  Dewey,  School 
and  Society  ;  O'Shea,  Education  and  Adjustment,  —  e.  g.  Education  must 
seek  to  adjust  the  individual  in  the  most  harmonious  way  to  society  (op. 
tit.  p.  286).   We  must  prepare  him  for  his  particular  needs  determined 
by  the  particular  offices  he  will  fill  in  society  (p.  287). 

2  "  Too  many  men  build  as  cathedrals  were  built  —  the  part  nearest  the 
ground  finished,  but  that  part  which  soars  toward  heaven,  the  turrets 
and  the  spires,  forever  incomplete."   Beecher,  Life  Thoughts. 

8  "  Science  is  teaching  the  world  that  the  ultimate  court  of  appeal  is 
observation  and  experiment,  and  not  authority ;  she  is  teaching  it  to  esti- 
mate the  value  of  evidence."  Huxley,  Lay  Sermons,  p.  118. 

*  "  Hateful  to  me  as  are  the  gates  of  Hades  is  he  who,  hiding  one 
thing  in  his  heart,  utters  another."  Homer,  Iliad. 


466      MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

and  to  know  what  other  men  have  done  and  why  they 
have  done  it,  and  reads  biography  and  history. 

He  desires  to  enter  into  the  life  of  the  race  and  to  live 
in  the  life  of  others,  and  reads  history,  geography,  and 
sociology. 

He  desires  to  understand  ever  more  and  more  clearly 
the  movements  of  societies  of  men,  and  reads  ancient 
and  foreign  literatures. 

He  reads  not  only  for  the  delight  in  reading,  but  also 
for  the  experience  that  it  gives  him  at  second-hand  to 
be  converted  to  his  own  uses. 

His  literacy  is  not  only  passive  and  receptive,  but  also 
active  and  aggressive ;  and  he  expresses  himself  ade- 
quately and  freely  in  language  competent  to  convey  his 
meaning. 

He  can  do  what  he  knows,  for  he  can  express  his 
thought  not  in  words  only  but  in  deeds  as  well1 

He  has  brought  his  body  into  subjection  to  his  will, 
and  has  educated  his  will  to  conformity  to  his  ideals ; 
therefore,  his  ideals  function  as  motives. 

He  is  quick  to  act  and  thorough  to  perform. 

He  is  too  proud  to  live  without  producing  wealth  (ma- 
terial economic  goods)  or  performing  services  as  valuable 
to  society  as  any  forms  of  wealth,  that  he  may  equal  at 
least  the  laboring  man. 

He  acts  upon  plan  and  method  to  realize  an  end,  and 
thereby  economizes  his  energy  and  secures  results  by 
his  living  and  working.2 

He  apportions  his  time  intelligently,  a  little  to  little 
things  and  much  to  great  things,3  meaning  to  neglect 
nothing  that  is  intrinsically  important. 

1  "  Bodily  activities  parallel  mental  life  at  every  point."   Judd,  Genetic 
Psychology  for  Teachers,  p.  315. 

2  "  Unqualified  activity,  of  whatever  kind,  leads  at  last  to  bankruptcy." 
Goethe,  Sayings  in  Prose. 

8  "  Those  who  apply  themselves  too  much  to  little  concerns  commonly 
become  incapable  of  great  deeds."   La  Rochefoucauld,  Refections. 


THE  WELL-EDUCATED  MAN  467 

He  does  not  merely  dream,  but  acts  and  achieves.1 

Whatever  he  does,  he  does  carefully ;  many  things  he 
does  not  attempt  to  do  ;  he  knows  that  a  thing  ill  done 
is  worse  than  not  attempted.2 

He  desires  nothing  that  he  does  not  need,  and,  there- 
fore, confines  his  activities  to  fixed  purposes ;  that  is, 
thinking  before  and  when  he  acts,  by  forethought  and 
care,  he  reaps  the  harvest  of  his  sowing. 

He  holds  his  knowledge  ready  and  available  for  use. 

His  every  act  is  either  to  his  own  good  without  dam- 
age to  his  fellows  or  to  the  good  of  his  fellows  without 
reference  to  himself. 

He  is  careless  of  personal  distinction  or  favor,  but  ex- 
acting in  matters  of  personal  rights  and  relations,  know- 
ing that  society  does  not  progress  because  of  trampling 
upon  the  honest,  industrious,  and  kindly  disposed  indi- 
vidual. 

He  has  grown  from  obedience  to  persons  into  obedi- 
ence to  public  opinion,  and  from  obedience  to  public 
opinion  into  obedience  to  the  principles  established 
through  ages  and  maintained  by  reasons  of  the  general 
human  good. 

His  only  fear  is  that  he  may  not  fear  cowardice  toward 
men  and  toward  the  affairs  of  Time,  fearing  only  God  and 
Eternity. 

His  delight  is  in  achievement  above  his  own,  his  sor- 
row for  every  failure  of  his  fellows,  his  pain  for  every  sin, 
for  he  sees  in  each  man  a  brother  and  in  woman  a  sister, 
and  realizes  that  he  himself  is  a  failure  and  disposed  to 
sin. 

He  insists  that  his  conduct  must  conform  to  his  sen- 

1  "  Everyman  feels  instinctively  that  all  the  beautiful  sentiments  in  the 
world  weigh  less  than  a  single  lovely  action."   Lowell,  Rousseau  and  the 
Sentimentalists. 

2  "  Want  of  care  does  us  more  damage  than  want  of  knowledge."  Frank- 
lin, Poor  Richard's  Almanac. 


468       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

timents,  holding  himself  rigidly  and  loyally  to  perform- 
ance as  nearly  as  possible  according  to  aspiration.1 

In  his  own  life,  he  repeats  as  completely  as  possible  the 
achievement  of  man  in  the  redemption  of  soul  from  flesh, 
realizing  the  ideals  of  chastity,  monogamy,  paternity, 
filial  piety,  honor,  honesty,  and  brotherly  love. 

He  is  just  before  he  is  generous,  but  is  always  gener- 
ous, first  being  just. 

He  is  patient  to  the  uttermost2 

He  rejoices  in  the  excellencies  of  others  and  grieves 
in  silence  over  their  faults,  never  running  publicly  and 
noisily  to  forgive  them. 

He  is  never  forward  save  for  a  worthy  cause ;  for  that 
he  is  willing,  if  need  be,  to  die. 

He  will  die,  if  need  be,  for  friend  or  for  country  or  for 
the  truth  that  he  believes ;  that  is,  for  the  faith  that  is 
in  him. 

He  knows  that  sin  is  "  the  eternal  outlaw," 3  and  that 
sin,  if  begun,  may  be  persisted  in,  and  that,  if  persisted 
in,  it  will  outlaw  him. 

He  lives  openly  because  he  can  afford  to  do  so ;  and 
his  openness  is  as  natural  as  is  the  shining  of  the  sun.4 

He  has,  indeed,  in  his  own  nature  a  charity  like  "  the 
natural  charity  of  the  sun."5 

1  "To  professional  honor  must  be  added  the  habit  of  the  veteran." 
Birdseye,  Industrial  Training  in  Our  Colleges,  p.  334. 
2  "  The  inspired  soul  but  flings  his  patience  in, 

And  slowly  that  outweighs  the  ponderous  globe ; 
One  faith  against  a  whole  world's  unbelief, 
One  soul  against  the  flesh  of  all  mankind." 

Lowell,  Columbus, 
*  Milton,  On  Divorce. 

4  "  Openness  is  the  sweet  fresh  air  of  our  moral  life."   George  Eliot, 
Daniel  Deronda,  chapter  xxxiii. 

"  Certainly  the  ablest  men  that  ever  were  have  had  all  an  openness  and 
frankness  of  dealing  and  a  name  of  certainty  and  veracity."   Bacon,  Of 
Simulation  and  of  Dissimulation. 
6  Browne,  Religio  Medici,  part  ii,  §  iii. 


THE  WELL-EDUCATED  MAN  469 

He  holds  near  and  dear  the  friends  of  his  youth  as 
long  as  God  spares  them,  and  adds  new  friends  as  the 
years  go  by  ;  eager  for  new  friends,  he  is  even  more  eager 
to  keep  those  whom  he  has.1 

He  lends  no  ear  to  calumny,  but  answers  it  with  an 
angry  countenance,2  pitying  the  frailty  of  others  who 
err,  but  rebuking  whoever  delights  in  the  tale  of  error, 
for  he  knows  that  even  a  good  and  honest  man  may  be 
misled  by  plausible  hearsay  or  by  the  report,  it  may  be, 
of  his  own  senses.3 

He  repeats  no  tale  of  evil  save  upon  necessity,  and 
judges  no  man  unless  not  to  do  so  might  lead  to  yet 
greater  evil.4 

When  courage  avails  naught  to  go  forward,  he  stands 
upon  the  solid  ground  of  fortitude. 

He  has  the  intelligence  to  conceive,  the  will  to  exe- 
cute, and  the  heart  to  desire  things  good  for  himself  and 
for  others.5 

He  is  glad  to  confess  his  sin ; 6  he  confesses  and 
repents.7 

1  "If  a  man  does  not  make  new  acquaintances  as  he  advances  through 
life,  he  will  soon  find  himself  left  alone.    A  man,  sir,  should  keep  his 
friendships  in  constant  repair."  Johnson,  in  Boswell,  Life  of  Doctor  Sam- 
uel Johnson. 

2  Proverbs,  xxv,  23. 

8  "  In  my  opinion,  the  best  of  all  characters  is  his  who  is  as  ready  to 
pardon  the  moral  errors  of  mankind  as  if  he  were  every  day  guilty  of 
such  errors  himself,  and  at  the  same  time  as  careful  not  to  commit  a  fault 
as  if  he  never  forgave  one."  Pliny,  Letters,  book  viii,  22. 

4  "  If  thou  hast  heard  a  word,  let  it  die  with  thee ;  and  be  bold,  it  will 
not  burst  thee."  Ecclesiasticus  (Jesus  son  of  Sirach),  xix,  10. 

6  Cf.  Junius,  Letters,  xxxvii. 

6  "  The  purifying  influence  of  public  confession  springs  from  the  fact 
that  by  it  the  hope  in  lies  is  forever  swept  away,  and  the  soul  recovers 
the  noble  attitude  of  simplicity."    George  Eliot,  Romola,  chapter  ix. 

7  "  He  who  repenteth  truly  is  greatly  sorrowful  for  his  past  sins :  not 
with  a  superficial  sigh  or  tear,  but  with  a  pungent,  afflictive  sorrow,  —  such 
a  sorrow  as  hates  the  sin  so  much  that  the  man  would  choose  to  die  rather 
than  act  it  any  more."   Jeremy  Taylor,  Holy  Living,  chapter  iv,  §  ix. 


470      MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

His  greatest  interest  is  in  that  enterprise  in  which  he 
is  personally  disinterested,  for  he  conceives  society  as 
his  true  and  larger  self  ;  therefore,  he  wins.1 

He  loves  to  give  and  grudges  to  receive,  fearing  lest 
he  has  not  given  full  measure,  running  over  ; 2  he  desires 
always  to  give,  and  never  to  get,  something  for  nothing  : 
moreover,  he  is  always  ready  to  give  away,  caring  not 
whether  "  the  bread  cast  upon  the  waters  "  ever  return  ; 
yet  he  knows  that  God,  the  infinite  spendthrift,  gives 
only  of  His  own ;  nor  does  he  take  counsel  whether  the 
receiver  deserves  the  gift,  for  God  sends  His  rain  upon 
the  just  and  the  unjust  alike. 

He  listens  to  no  wanton  tales,3  but  seeks  spiritual  de- 
lights ;  and  his  own  speech  is  of  the  aspirations  of  the  soul.4 

Manifesting  thus  in  every  act,  in  every  word,  in  every 
disposition,  and  even  in  his  silence,  the  evidences  of  intel- 
ligence, of  efficiency,  and  of  morality,  the  well-educated 
man  proceeds  to  acquire  the  powers,  the  arts,  and  the 
graces  of  culture  :  he  has  built  him  a  mansion,  and  would 
furnish  it  as  a  suitable  residence  for  his  soul.  He  needs 
the  goodly  furniture  of  the  sciences,  and  the  adornments 
of  art :  he  needs  to  set  in  order  within  and  without,  in 
the  gardens  and  in  the  galleries,  all  things  that  he  has 
acquired  :  he  needs  philosophy.  And  not  for  a  moment 
may  he  neglect  the  tenant  of  his  body,  which  is  his  soul, 
nor  the  tenement  of  his  soul,  which  is  his  body. 

He  will  value  truth  and  seek  to  acquire  all  truth  in 

1  "  To  be  disinterested  is  to  be  strong,  and  the  world  is  at  the  feet  of 
him  whom  it  cannot  tempt."   Amiel,  Journal. 

2  "  Be  charitable  before  wealth  makes  thee  covetous,  and  lose  not  the 
glory  of  the  mite.    If  riches  increase,  let  thy  mind  hold  peace  with  them." 
Sir  Thomas  Browne,  Christian  Morals,  part  i,  §  5. 

8  "That  wanton  word  will  set  a  wanton  heart  on  fire  which  a  sober 
heart  doth  hear  with  pity  as  a  kind  of  bedlam  of  speech."  Richard  Baxter, 
Christian  Ethics,  p.  368. 

4  "Cure  fleshly  desires  and  delights  by  spiritual  desires  and  delights." 
Op.  cit.  p.  261. 


THE   WELL-EDUCATED  MAN  471 

relation  and  exactly ;  above  truth,  he  will  value  beauty ; 
and  goodness  above  beauty,1  aspiring  after  holiness  as 
the  farthest  stage  upon  the  journey  toward  perfection 
that  finite  man  can  reach. 

Upon  reason,  he  will  always  preserve  the  faith  that 
hope  may  triumph  over  experience  ; 2  and  he  will  never 
despair  of  the  victory  of  right  over  wrong,  of  principle 
over  expediency. 

He  will  become  pleasing  in  his  excellencies,  and  not 
displeasing  even  in  his  faults. 

He  will  rate  wealth  as  fundamental,  but  only  as  that, 
never  as  final. 

He  will  learn  not  to  confuse  fame  with  reputation  or 
power  with  applause  or  property  with  personal  desert  or 
popular  favor  with  genuine  support,  or  indeed  any  thin  or 
false  appearance  with  the  real  fact  or  truth. 

Because  he  is  but  one,  he  will  not  shuffle  off  responsi- 
bility, but  will  do  what  he  can  and  all  that  he  can,  and 
calmly  leave  the  event  to  God  ;  rather  because  he  is  but 
one,  he  will  really  be  one,  integral,  self-dependent,  forth- 
going,  and  substantial.3 

He  will  learn  that  since  God  alone  is  finally  respon- 
sible, even  for  himself,  he  is  not  to  take  too  seriously  the 
circumstances  and  events  of  life,  for  there  is  a  cosmic 
weather  beyond  human  control.4 

Ignoring  democracy,  he  will  obey  his  real  superiors, 
will  advise  and  receive  the  advice  of  his  equals,  and  will 
rule  his  inferiors,  and,  ignoring  aristocracy,  will  seek  to 
hold  all  men  at  their  particular  values. 

1  "  Beauty  is  part  of  the  finished  language  by  which  goodness  speaks." 
George  Eliot,  Romola,  chapter  xix. 

2  Johnson,  in  Boswell,  Life  of  Doctor  Samuel  Johnson. 

8  "  Be  substantially  great  in  thyself,  and  more  than  thou  appearest  unto 
others  :  and  let  the  world  be  deceived  in  thee,  as  they  are  in  the  lights  of 
heaven."  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  Christian  Morals,  part  i,  §  19. 

*  "  One  on  God's  side  is  a  majority."  Wendell  Phillips,  Brooklyn 
Speech,  Nov.  I,  1859. 


472       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

He  will  fight  evil  in  the  world,  whether  it  directly 
affects  himself  or  not,  knowing  that  the  sorest  evil  of  all 
evils  is  to  become  indifferent,  insensible,  callous. 

He  will  forever  believe  that  "  somehow  good  shall  be 
the  final  goal  of  ill ; " l  and  will  try  so  to  interpret  each 
evil ;  but  he  will  never  allow  this  belief  to  dull  his  own 
will  to  do  right  and  to  forestall  and  to  overthrow 
wrong. 

He  will  understand  that  life  is  a  battle  in  which  "the 
Son  of  man  goes  forth  to  war,"  2  and  will  not  rejoice 
until  the  hour  of  peace  after  victory. 

He  will  know  that  most  desired  results  are  the  issue 
of  long  processes,  and  will  gladly  pay  the  price  by  labors 
in  science  to  accumulate  truth  and  in  art  to  acquire  skill ; 
he  will  pay  cheerfully  the  price  in  waiting  also  and  in 
self-denial ;  he  will  measure  his  progress  or  his  retro- 
gression in  this  life  of  scientific  research  or  artistic 
endeavor  by  the  numbers  and  the  quality  of  the  diffi- 
culties upon  his  way. 

He  will,  play  his  part  in  every  social  institution, 
desiring  to  make  his  soul  a  microcosm  of  the  cosmos, 
a  true  image  of  the  world,  and  to  find  his  own  self  in  all 
the  society  of  men  :  therefore  will  he  belong  to  Family, 
to  Church,  to  School,  to  State,  even  to  Business,  and  in 
the  hour  of  defense  to  War ;  and  upon  occasion  such 

1  The  line  is  from  Tennyson;  cf.  Longfellow:  — 
"  It  is  Lucifer ; 
The  son  of  mystery  ; 
And  since  God  suffers  him  to  be, 
He,  too,  is  God's  minister 
And  labors  for  some  good 
By  us  not  understood." 
Cf.  also  Shakespeare  :  — 

"  There  is  some  soul  of  good  in  things  evil, 
Would  men  observingly  distil  it  out." 

Henry  Vt  iv,  i,  4. 
3  Luther,  Hymn,  first  line. 


THE  WELL-EDUCATED  MAN  473 

lesser  institutions  as  serve  the  whole  purpose  of  human- 
ity ;  for  he  has  eschewed  narrowness  to  preserve  growth, 
and  will  not  dissipate  his  energies  upon  haphazard,  but 
will  centre  them  upon  the  enduring  movements  of  the 
race. 

He  will  love  his  wife1  and  his  children  beyond  himself, 
rinding  his  self-respect  in  entire  devotion  to  those  whom 
God  has  intrusted  to  him  ;  moreover,  he  will  love  his 
kindred  and  his  neighbors  with  an  affection  beyond  any 
concern  or  interest  for  himself :  and  thus  will  he  go 
about  in  the  world  a  free  man  and  unashamed. 

Whatever  light  he  gets  he  will  use  by  taking  it  forward 
into  the  greater  darkness.2 

He  will  recognize  discouragement  as  either  physical 
fatigue  or  as  "  the  sin  of  Lucifer."  3 

Whatever  seems  to  him  righteousness,  that  he  will 


serve. 


And  he  will  live  beholding  death  before  him  not  as  an 
evil,  because  it  cuts  off  hope ; 5  nor  yet  as  a  mockery ; 6 

1  "  And  they  twain  shall  be  one  flesh."  Jesus,  Mark,   Gospel,  x,  8,  9, 
quoting  Genesis,  ii,  24. 

2  "  The  light  that  we  have  gained  was  given  us,  not  to  be  ever  staring 
on,  but  by  it  to  discover  onward  things,  more  remote  from  our  knowledge." 
Milton,  Prose  Works,  vol.  ii,  p.  89. 

8  "  Discouragement  is  but  disenchanted  egotism."   Mazzini,  Works,  vol. 
vi,  p.  25. 

4  "  Who  is  there  that  in  all  things  serveth  righteousness  with  so  great 
care  as  the  world  and  its  lords  are  served  withal  ?  "  Coit,  after  Thomas  & 
Kempis,  Imitation  of  Christ,  II,  ii,  2,  3. 
6  Hazlitt,  Characteristics,  no.  35. 

6  "  I  dare  not  guess  ;  but  in  this  life 
Of  error,  ignorance,  and  strife, 
Where  nothing  is,  but  all  things  seem, 
And  we  the  shadows  of  the  dream, 
It  is  a  modest  creed,  and  yet 
Pleasant,  if  one  considers  it, 
To  own  that  death  itself  must  be, 
Like  all  the  rest,  a  mockery." 

Shelley,  The  Sensitive  Plant,  Conclusion. 


474      MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

but  as  a  consolation;1  yes,  as  a  victory;2  and  he  will 
not  die,  but  will  be  ready  to  pass  into  the  different  life, 
in  the  faith  that  it  will  be  larger,  fuller,  and  better. 

1  "  Dark  mother,  always  gliding  near,  with  soft  feet, 

Have  none  chanted  for  thee  a  chant  of  fullest  welcome  ? 
Then  I  chant  it  for  thee  ;  I  glorify  thee  above  all; 
I  bring  thee  a  song,  that  when  thou  must  indeed  come, 
Come  unfalteringly." 

Whitman,  Leaves  of  Grass,  p.  260. 
2  Isaiah,  xxv,  8 ;  Paul,  I  Corinthians,  xv,  54. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

THE    LINE    OF    MARCH 

And  I  believed  the  poets ;  it  is  they 
Who  utter  wisdom  from  the  central  deep, 
And,  listening  to  the  inner  flow  of  things, 
Speak  to  the  age  out  of  eternity. 

LOWELL,  Columbus. 

But  to  him  that  knoweth  not  the  port  to  which  he  is  bound,  no  wind  can  be  favorable. 
—  LKIGHTON,  Works,  vol.  iv,  p.  194. 

The  indwelling  divinity  that  shapes  the  ends  of  human  living  appointed  freedom  to  be 
the  goal  of  human  progress.  —  HORNE,  Philosophy  of  Education,  p.  135. 

UPON  the  northern  side  of  a  lake  in  the  heart  of  Maine 
there  is  a  forest  that  in  a  significant  manner  reminds  the 
city  visitor  of  the  civilization  whence  he  came.  One 
reaches  this  pathless  tract  of  the  woods  by  boat  or  canoe 
across  the  lake.  Going  ashore,  one  enters  a  thicket  of 
little  birches,  pines,  hemlocks,  beeches,  and  chestnuts, 
the  trees  standing  of  all  heights  from  shoots  just  out 
of  the  ground  to  saplings  of  ten  or  twelve  feet.  So  dense 
is  the  thicket  that  one  cannot  see  ten  feet  in  any  direc- 
tion. The  beauty  of  the  green  and  yellow  masses  of 
young  life  in  the  sunshine  of  a  summer's  day  is  exhil- 
arating. The  very  ground  seems  to  exult  in  life.  Over  all 
shines  the  unbroken  blue  of  the  sky.  Breasting  one's 
way  forward  through  the  maze  for  a  half-mile  beyond 
the  lake,  one  reaches  a  second  wood.  The  scene  is 
strangely  transformed.  Here  are  tall  pines  and  hemlocks, 
clumps  of  chestnuts  and  of  birches,  and  an  occasional 
triumphant  beech  ;  and  here  are  thousands  of  dead  trees 
still  standing,  visible  evidence  that  the  warfare  of  the 
leaves  for  sunlight  and  of  the  roots  for  water  has  not 
been  without  victims  as  well  as  victors.  As  one  looks 
about,  the  sadness  of  the  forest  life  is  oppressive.  Upon 


476       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

the  ground,  here  and  there,  are  patches  of  turf,  where  the 
sunlight  of  heaven  still  flickers  down.  A  mile  of  this 
wood  of  the  dead  and  the  living,  and  one  reaches  the 
oldest  wood.  Here  travel  is  free  among  the  giant  trees. 
Above,  the  sky  is  scarcely  visible  even  in  spots  ;  below 
is  a  soft  carpet  of  moss.  Brooks  and  rivulets  are  edged 
with  ferns.  Now  and  then  one  passes  a  ruin  ;  an  old, 
overgrown,  and  rotted  pine  or  chestnut  or  beech  had 
caught  the  storm  upon  its  mighty  head,  and  had  fallen 
in  the  death  struggle.  That  handbreadth  of  open  sky 
up  there  marks  where  this  great  white  birch  stood 
before  the  March  gale  uprooted  it  and  threw  it  here.  Its 
emulous  brethren  of  the  forest  will  soon  fill  in  that  sky- 
space.  This  wood  is  the  last  chapter  of  the  warfare:  the 
little  dead  trees  of  a  century  ago  are  but  the  rich  mould 
that  makes  the  ground  soft  to  the  tread  of  beast  or  man. 

What  caused  these  woods  ?  Great  fires  ate  up  this  and 
that  stretch  of  the  forest ;  and  seeds  and  spores  in  the 
ground  came  to  life.  The  first  wood  is  but  four  years 
old,  the  second  is  thirty,  the  third  is  older  than  the 
memory  of  man. 

Like  the  trees  in  the  woods  are  the  men  of  the  grow- 
ing, spreading  American  town  and  city.  In  the  early 
days  of  the  city,  upon  some  fortunate  site  by  sea  or  lake, 
upon  river  or  railroad,  there  are  space,  sunlight,  food,  and 
water  for  all,  for  there  is  equality  of  opportunity.  But, 
after  forty,  ninety,  two  hundred  years,  there  are  classes 
of  supreme  individuals,  —  capitalists,  landlords,  profes- 
sional men,  politicians,  —  and  masses  of  dependents,  — 
tenants,  wage-earners,  parasites.  The  lords  grow  and 
grow.  The  serving-men  cannot  rise  to  the  higher  plane 
where  the  sunlight  pours  in  floods.  This  is  literally 
true.  Imprisoned  by  the  wage-rate,  the  price-range,  and 
the  standard  of  living,  the  proletarian  cannot  grow.  The 
third  state  of  the  city  is  the  worst.  We  do  not  yet  see 
it  in  America ;  but  Rome  saw  it  in  the  Decline  and 


THE   LINE   OF   MARCH  477 

Paris  saw  it  in  the  Revolution.  The  city  is  ruined  utterly 
when  it  oppresses  its  provinces  and  colonies,  over- 
shadowing their  lives  and  draining  their  food-supplies 
without  return.  It  will  make  no  difference  whether  the 
oppression  takes  the  mode  of  political  taxation  and  con- 
fiscation as  it  did  in  Rome,  or  the  mode  of  seignorial  and 
ecclesiastical  exactions  as  in  France,  or  the  mode  of 
economic  exhaustion  by  rents  and  profits  as  it  may 
yet  do  in  America.  The  doom  of  a  people  is  sealed 
when  it  is  no  longer  profitable  and  joyous  to  live  in  the 
free  air  upon  one's  own  land,  eating  the  fruits  of  labor. 
We  must  get  from  the  open  country  constant  acces- 
sions of  vigorous  boys  and  girls,  men  and  women ;  or 
perish.  Wage-starved  farm-laborers  upon  the  machinery- 
cultivated  farms  of  great  capitalists  cannot  breed  and  rear 
competent  American  citizens.  Such  a  day,  when  our 
cities  shall  be  composed  of  privileged  millionaires  living 
in  parks  and  palaces  and  of  proletarians  crowded  into 
tenements,  and  when  the  country  shall  be  a  waste,  is,  of 
course,  far  off  :  it  may  never  come.  But  it  will  come  as 
certain  as  history  is  certain,  unless  we  can  solve  the 
hitherto  unsolved  problem  of  securing  in  each  generation 
saecula  saeculorum  a  sufficient  number  of  persons  to 
maintain  the  civilization.  It  may  be  the  will  of  God 
that  no  people  shall  ever  solve  the  problem.  It  may  be 
that  it  is  best  for  mankind  that,  freed  from  all  traditions, 
the  light  of  culture  shall  move  from  people  to  people, 
until  humanity  itself  shall  pass  utterly  away. 

However  this  may  be,  it  still  remains  the  duty  of  every 
thinker,  of  all  the  righteous,  of  the  free  in  soul,  to  de- 
sire and  to  urge,  whatever  be  the  present  social  condi- 
tions, such  an  organization  of  society  as  encourages  the 
development  of  perfect,  not  blighted,  not  starved  human 
beings.  The  lone  tree  in  the  pasture,  spreading  vast 
branches  into  the  sunlight,  into  the  rain,  into  the  gale, 
spreading  into  the  soil  vast  roots  that  grip  the  rock, 


478       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

typifies  what  every  family  should  be.  And  how  can  such 
a  family  grow  save  by  life  upon  land  ? 

But  in  the  real  world  of  American  men  and  women, 
how  different  is  the  typical  condition  of  the  family ! 
How  little  has  Nature,  how  much  has  Civilization  or- 
dered its  life !  When  wages  are  high  and  work  is  steady, 
marriages  increase  and  the  birth-rate  rises.1  We  owe 
our  wives  and  our  husbands,  our  children,  our  own  lives, 
to  the  social  milieu.  The  Acts  of  Congress,  the  decrees 
of  the  Church,  the  processes  of  trade,  scientific  discov- 
eries and  technical  inventions,  wars,  heroisms,  mostly 
silent,  —  these  caused  our  being  and  condition  us  now. 
By  them,  we  live ;  and  by  them,  we  die. 

A  city  of  nearly  four  hundred  thousand  souls  lay  at 
the  junction  of  railroads  and  steamship  lines.  The  earth 
quaked ;  and  its  buildings  of  steel  or  stone  or  wood  fell 
like  houses  of  cards.  Fire,  the  transformer,  the  great- 
est blessing,  the  most  terrible  curse  of  man,  came  and 
ate  up  the  ruins  and  what  the  earth-powers  had  spared. 
And  four  hundred  thousand  people  were  desolate.  Tell 
the  story  to  the  men  of  ancient  Nineveh  ;  and  they 
answer,  "  How  save  them  ?  "  and  "  Why  save  them  ?  " 
How  ?  By  the  thousand  inventions  of  man  since  the 
people  of  Nineveh  rotted  away,  leaving  their  houses  and 
temples  to  be  buried  in  the  sands  from  the  deserts. 
Consider  these  inventions,  —  iron,  steel,  tools,  machinery, 
steam,  electricity,  telegraph,  telephone,  typewriter,  the 
public  army,  federal  government,  medicine,  credit.  Why 
save  the  San  Franciscans  ?  Because  in  three  thousand 
years  these  inventions  have  developed  human  gregari- 
ousness  into  world-wide  social  sympathy.  This  cosmo- 

1  Mayo-Smith,  Statistics  and  Sociology,  p.  74.  This  fact  is  carefully  to 
be  discriminated  from  the  more  important  fact  that  as  communities  and 
classes  rise  in  culture  both  death-rates  and  birth-rates  decline ;  and  from 
another  fact  that  poverty  without  hope  is  reckless  in  all  respects,  —  mar- 
riage, births,  diseases,  deaths. 


THE   LINE    OF    MARCH  479 

politanism  has  transformed  the  rivalry  of  many  cities 
into  commonwealth  and  enlarged  into  vast  empires  the 
regions  of  domestic  peace. 

To  the  city  inhabitant  of  three  thousand  years  ago  as 
to  the  country  primitive  of  to-day,  the  rescue  of  the  San 
Franciscans  would  appear  to  be  the  work  of  superhuman 
beings,  and  the  motives  as  well  as  the  methods  would  be 
unintelligible.  What  we  are  very  apt  to  forget  is  that 
the  past  and  the  primitive  persist  in  the  present  so  that 
to  millions  and  millions  of  modern  men,  women,  and 
children,  the  advanced  life  of  the  modern  world  is  not 
understandable  ;  and  because  it  is  not  understandable, 
it  is  to  them  unknown.  Only  one  of  imaginative  intel- 
lect can  comprehend  a  tale  or  an  exposition  or  a  picture 
of  that  which  one  has  not  personally  experienced. 

There  follows  from  this  a  practical  application  in  edu- 
cation. The  motive  in  education  is  to  develop  power  to 
understand  modern  human  life.  This  is  the  motive  both 
of  the  pupil  and  of  the  educator.  The  pupil  aspires  to 
grow,  the  educator  intends  to  nourish  the  growing  soul  of 
the  pupil.  In  respect  to  the  pupil,  the  material  that  is  to 
be  developed  is  his  own  soul ;  in  respect  to  the  educator, 
the  materials  to  be  supplied  to  the  pupil  are  the  facts  and 
principles,  that  is,  the  truth,  of  the  world  of  Nature 
and  of  the  world  of  humanity  that  environ  him.  Most 
of  the  facts  of  the  latter  world  and  many  of  those  of 
the  other,  some  of  the  principles  of  human  nature  and 
most  of  those  of  the  natural  world  are  unworthy  of  in- 
telligent, energetic,  righteous,  and  merciful  men  and 
women.  True  civilization  is  progress  away  from  Nature.1 
The  survival  of  the  fittest,  warfare,  brute  force,  sex- 
promiscuity,  and  uncounted  other  displays  of  the  brute, 
civilized  man  is  slowly  discarding.  Egoism  is  not  dying, 
but  is  developing  altruism,  its  counterpart,  its  mate. 
These  are  obverse  and  reverse  of  the  solid  shield.  By 

1  "  Man  is  Nature's  rebel."   Lankester,  Kingdom  of  Man,  p.  26. 


480       MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

their  interaction,  these  forces  generate  humanity,  and 
all  its  most  active  powers  of  mind  and  soul. 

Not  merely  as  a  matter  of  abstract  principle,  but  also, 
and  very  definitely,  in  the  concrete  actions  and  disposi- 
tions of  individuals  must  Nature  be  rejected  by  sound 
human  morality.  I  have  seen  in  civilization  so  much  of 
the  bitterness  of  life,  its  cruelty,  its  brutishness,  its  piti- 
lessness,  its  crass  ignorance  and  vain  pride,  its  abomina- 
tions worse  than  any  possible  degradation  of  animalism  ; 
that  at  times  civilization  seems  to  me  a  refinement  of  the 
worst  rather  than  of  the  best  in  man.  Need  I  specify  ? 
I  have  known  child-bearing  wives  to  be  beaten  by  hus- 
bands, fathers  merrily  carousing  in  dining-rooms  when 
their  own  babies  lay  in  caskets  in  parlors,  children  cuffed 
into  insensibility  and  beaten  with  lead  pipe  into  idiocy, 
elegant  women  luxuriating  on  the  avenues  upon  the  rents 
of  slum  tenements,  and  even  of  dens  of  infamy,  city 
councils  debauched  that  rich  men  might  be  yet  richer 
and  poor  men  be  transformed  into  scoundrels,  widows 
robbed  by  smug  hypocrites,  ambitious  boys  blocked  in 
their  progress,  lovely  girls  ruined  in  ways  beyond  num- 
ber and  imagination,  parents  and  near  relatives  aban- 
doned to  the  cold  mercy  of  the  public  ;  and  what  not  ? 
Nineveh  has  come  again  in  New  York  and  Chicago,  and 
Sodom  reappears  in  many  at  city.  These  things  I  know  : 
I  have  not  only  read  them  in  books,  in  newspapers,  or 
in  histories.  The  Boston  of  the  eighteenth  century 
would  not  know  the  morals  of  the  Boston  of  to-day.  All 
the  world  is  changed.  And  we  must  face  the  crucial 
question,  —  Shall  we  leave  the  issue  of  virtue  against 
vice  to  laissez  faire,  or  shall  we  interfere  ?  The  old 
personal  morality  is  not  enough  to  solve  these  new  ques- 
tions. It  may  be  that  for  his  own  soul's  welfare,  a  Car- 
negie, a  Rockefeller,  a  Vanderbilt,  a  Gould,  a  Field,  or 
any  other  multimillionaire  or  millionaire,  or  for  that  mat- 
ter any  rich  man,  should  sell  all  that  he  has  and  give  to 


THE   LINE   OF   MARCH  481 

the  poor  ; x  but  to  do  so  would  only  ease  his  own  burden 
of  responsibility  and  convert  a  necessary  callousness 
into  a  genuine  tenderness  toward  humanity,  for  the  mis- 
ery of  the  world  has  become  too  great  to  be  relieved  by 
even  a  billion  dollars  or  by  a  billion  dollars'  worth  of 
goods.  The  ethical  problems  of  to-day  cannot  be  solved 
in  this  wise  :  perhaps  they  cannot  be  solved  at  all ;  but 
if  they  can  be  solved,  it  must  be  by  operation  of  the 
entire  social  machinery,  by  the  effective  functioning  of 
all  the  social  institutions,  and  by  the  development  of 
yet  new  institutions.  Persons  are  no  longer  enough. 
Particular  societies  and  corporations  are  no  longer  enough. 
We  need  for  the  redemption  of  man  all  the  vital,  intel- 
lectual, emotional,  and  moral  resources  of  society,  di- 
rected by  the  institutions  of  Family,  Church,  State, 
School,  all  Arts  and  Cultures.  From  what  is  man  to 
be  redeemed  ?  From  the  renewed  private  feudal  wars 
now  known  as  Business,  from  all  public  wars  of  nations, 
and  from  the  rebarbarization  to  which  every  generation 
inevitably  tends  from  mere  atavism  and  congenital 
ignorance.  Let  us  not  forget  that  minds  and  souls 
are.  wrecked  by  financial  insolvencies  and  by  financial 
plethoras,  that  bodies  are  destroyed  in  millions  by  pov- 
erty and  rotted  in  thousands  by  luxury,  that  every  war 
sets  back  the  hands  upon  the  clock  of  progress,  and  that 
sighings  and  tears  and  white,  silent  griefs  are  not  yet 
gone  out  of  the  earth.  There  is  still  evil  for  the  sake  of 
ends ;  and,  worse,  there  is  evil  in  sheer  malice.  Why  ? 
Because,  as  every  one  knows,  the  agencies  of  good  have 
not  yet  triumphed  in  the  world  over  the  agencies  of 
evil  ;  to  use  theological  terms,  Christ  has  not  yet  over- 
come Satan.  There  is  a  love  of  God,  a  desire  to  return 
into  the  bosom  of  the  Father,  a  longing  of  the  finite  to  be- 
come once  more  a  part,  as  I  believe,  a  self-understanding 
and  self-directing  part,  of  the  Infinite  that  can  and  does 

1  Jesus,  Matthew,  Gospel,  xix,  21. 


overcome  the  nat.ural  in  man,  for  the  spiritual  is  higher 
than  the  natural  and  can  reduce  and  absorb  it  once 
more  into  itself.  How?  By  regeneration  as  by  conversion 
of  individuals  and  by  revolutions  of  peoples  ;  and  what 
is  regeneration  but  return  once  more  into  the  spirit  ? 

In  social  conditions  of  ignorance  and  poverty,  the  fer- 
tile soils  of  the  natural  vices,  and  in  social  conditions  of 
congested  property  in  wealth,  the  fertile  soil  of  the  arti- 
ficial vices,  the  ignorant  and  the  poor  multiply  so  fast  as 
to  endanger  the  stock  of  the  race  by  reducing  its  quality 
while  the  intelligent  and  the  rich  persistently  decrease 
in  numbers;  therefore,  the  masses  increase  and  the 
leaders  decrease.  The  chaos  that  sets  in  is  lit  only  by 
hatreds  and  by  ideals  :  which  together  generate  thought 
and  action.  This  road  leads  down  into  the  hell  of  social 
revolution.1  In  this  relation,  education  becomes  the  cure 
for  civilization,  and  effects  its  cure  in  a  variety  of  ways. 
The  road  of  education,  therefore,  is  the  only  road  upon 
which  a  nation  can  travel  safely  forever;  it  is  a  true 
line  of  march.  What  is  this  road  ?  To  develop  by  educa- 
tion and  to  utilize  by  culture  in  civilization  all  the  powers 
of  every  individual  and  to  let  nothing  whatsoever  inter- 
fere with  so  doing ;  this  is  a  strait  and  narrow  road, 
"the  strait  and  narrow  way"  that  leads  to  life,  to  ever 
more  life.  It  means  at  once  energy  and  restraint,  faith 
and  doubt,  courage  and  caution,  speech  and  silence,  ego- 
ism and  altruism,  knowledge  of  this  world  and  a  sense 
of  a  world  beyond,  all  things  in  just  balance  ;  in  short, 
wisdom,  health,  and  holiness.  Few  have  found  this  way : 
no  nation  has  ever  followed  it  long.  But  those  who  find 
and  follow  it,  of  course,  live  forever ;  and  the  nation  that 
finds  and  follows  it  will  live  as  long  as  grass  grows  upon 
the  earth. 

1  "  When  the  emotions  take  side  with  the  intellect,  then  comes  the 
moral  earthquake  that  destroys  the  existing  order."  Stephen,  History  of 
English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  p.  17. 


THE    LINE    OF    MARCH  483 

We  need  not  speak  of  this  supreme  matter  altogether 
•wholly  in  generalities.  It  means  a  low  birth-rate,  that 
every  child  may  be  well  cared  for,  and  a  low  death-rate, 
that  all  the  possible  good  of  each  life  shall  be  realized 
for  other  lives ;  but  it  means  also  a  higher  number  of 
births  than  of  deaths  ;  that  as  long  as  the  earth  bears  fruit 
abundantly,  there  shall  be  an  increasing  population  to  spur 
us  on  to  effort.  It  means,  in  this  particular  matter,  the 
redemption  of  women  from  too  frequent  child-bearing  and 
too  prolonged  and  too  harassing  care  of  children,  that,  in 
their  full  maturity  after  forty  years  of  age,  women  as 
well  as  men  may  be  free  to  contribute  wealth  and  culture 
to  the  general  store  of  riches  and  of  knowledge. 

It  means  the  reconstruction  of  criminals  by  education, 
and  the  prevention  of  criminals  by  the  proper  feeding, 
housing,  and  schooling  of  children. 

It  means  universal  homes. 

It  means  the  subordination  of  government,  of  business, 
and  every  other  social  activity  of  the  present  adults  to 
the  higher  race  interests  of  the  young.1 

It  means  the  conquest  of  the  human  mind  by  a  new 
ideal,  the  highest  as  yet  conceived,  —  the  employment 
of  this  life  as  the  means  to  a  later,  larger  life  ;  in  another 
phrase,  education  as  religion ;  and  in  yet  another  phrase, 
man  as  always  the  offspring  of  God.  For  it  converts  life 
into  a  university,  a  school  of  exceeding  many  and  various 
opportunities  radiating  from  one  idea,  —  the  possibility 
of  a  "far-off  divine  event "  for  each  one  of  us. 

This  is  no  new  idea.  It  is  not  a  new  ideal.  It  is,  how- 
ever, a  most  noteworthy  illustration  of  the  truth  that 
seers  prevision  the  ages  of  the  remote  future,  for  this 
ideal  of  Moses,  of  Isaiah,  of  Ezekiel,  of  Amos,  and  of 

1  "  The  greatest  single  factor  in  the  development  of  the  social  and  emo- 
tional aspects  of  morality  is  the  natural  selection  of  stocks  that  show 
increasing  care  for  offspring."  Tufts,  "  On  Moral  Evolution,"  in  Studies 
in  Philosophy  and  Psychology  (Carman  Memorial). 


484      MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

Jesus  has  now  become  the  common  opinion  of  men  :  the 
thinkers  have  at  length  converted  the  multitude.  We  do 
not  ask  now  whether  an  age  of  righteousness  is  desirable 
or  how  it  is  obtainable  ;  we  know  that  it  is  desirable  and 
that  it  is  obtainable  by  education.  Our  inquiry  is  solely 
how  to  bring  universal  education,  which  is  universal 
religion,  into  reality.  For  this  extraordinary  age  is  a  con- 
geries of  the  heavens  of  which  men  have  been  dreaming 
in  various  lands  throughout  all  history.  The  American 
is  living  in  a  new  Jerusalem  come  down  out  of  the  heaven 
of  spiritual  life  upon  the  earth  of  material  things.  It  is 
not  a  perfect  Jerusalem,  for  the  perfect  is  ever  before  us, 
beckoning.  And  the  great  discovery  is  that  there  never 
was  chaos,  but  always  an  eternally  evolving  cosmos.1  The 
most  substantial  are  the  immaterial  principles, —  the 
laws,  the  forces,  the  processes  by  which  the  earth  is 
ribbed  with  rocks,  the  stars  proceed  in  their  courses,  and 
the  minds  of  men  search  after  God. 

This  procedure,  therefore, — by  which  the  physical  is 
transformed  into  the  psychical,  by  which  the  bodily 
activity  of  men  becomes  intelligent ;  their  intelligent 
activity  becomes  efficient  in  the  production  of  material 
things,  the  necessaries,  comforts,  and  luxuries  of  life; 
their  material  wealth  necessitates  morality  ;  their  moral 
disposition  involves  them  in  serious,  scientific  inquiry 
into  the  realities  of  Nature  ;  their  science  persists  until 
it  bases  and  bulwarks  their  arts  ;  their  life  of  art  becomes 
self-conscious  in  philosophy ;  and  their  philosophy  directs 
them  to  desire  wholeness  and  unity  of  conduct,  of  soul, 
of  the  life  personal  and  social,  —  this  procedure  from 
ignorance  to  wisdom  is  a  formal  and  the  normal  evolu- 
tion of  man,  which  evolution  is  education. 

Man  becomes,  then,  his  own  supreme  art-product,  the 
maker  of  himself.  Nature,  which  produces  man  and  de- 
stroys him  accidentally,  it  would  seem,  and  recklessly,  is 

1  Duncan,  The  New  Knowledge,  part  vii,  chapter  v. 


THE    LINE   OF   MARCH  485 

conquered.  There  is  no  more  death,  but  only  life  after 
life.  Reason,  which  is  the  true  nature  of  the  soul,  its 
reality,  is  the  victor  over  all  the  enemies  of  life. 

"  This  world  is  God's  workshop  "  *  wherein  He  makes 
men  for  life  elsewhere.  To  know  this  is  to  enter  here 
upon  the  life  eternal. 

1  Beecher,  Proverbs  from  Plymouth  Pulpit:  Manhood. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

THE    MEANING    OF    LIFE 

Life  is  a  warfare  and  the  sojourn  of  a  stranger.  —  MARCUS  AUREUUS,  Thoughts.,  ii,  17. 

Not  to  look  onwards  to  the  ideal  life  of  man  is  to  deny  our  birthright  of  mind. — 
JBFFBRIES,  Pageant  of  Summer. 

Adjustment  has  two  sides.  In  one  respect,  it  relates  to  the  modification  effected  in  the 
individual  in  order  to  suit  itself  to  the  external  conditions  of  its  environment.  In  the  other 
respect  it  relates  to  the  modifications  effected  in  the  environment  to  suit  it  to  the  individ- 
ual. —  HARRIS,  Preface,  p.  vj,  in  Judd,  Genetic  Psychology  for  Teachers. 

The  only  thing  that  is  good  is  the  Living  Love  that  wills  the  blessedness  of  others. 
This  is  the  true  Good-in-itself,  sought  by  all  men.  All  things  else  —  resolves,  sentiments, 
actions,  tendencies  —  share  with  this  only  derivatively  the  name  of  Good.  Neither  a 
realm  of  Truth  nor  a  realm  of  Worth  is  prior  as  the  initial  reality.  To  finite  cognition,  the 
one  unfolding  movement  of  this  reality  appears  in  the  three  aspects  of  the  good  that  is  its 
end,  the  constructive  impulse  by  which  this  end  is  attained,  and  the  conformity  to  law 
that  keeps  the  impulse  in  the  path  to  that  end.  All  the  moral  commands  that,  as  sharply 
defined  maxims,  attract  our  attention  are  but  a  mechanism  devised  for  its  own  realization 
by  Creative  Love.  To  this  mechanism  belong  the  universal,  the  class,  and  the  state  of 
things,  —  mere  schemes  for  the  establishment  of  truth  and  of  order.  Where  we  cannot 
reconcile  the  goodness  and  the  omnipotence  of  God,  there  our  finite  intelligence  has  come 
to  the  limit  of  its  tether ;  yet  we  may  believe  a  solution  exists,  though  we  may  not  under- 
stand it.  The  true  reality  is  and  forever  ought  to  be  not  Matter,  and  still  less  Idea,  but 
the  living  personal  spirit  of  God  and  the  various  personal  Spirits  of  His  creation.  — 
LOTZE,  Microcosmus  (abridged,  Hamilton-Jones's  translation),  pp.  717,  721-727. 

"  GLAD  to  go  hence."  Such  is  the  verdict  of  most  of 
the  persons  who  have  sat  at  the  bedside  of  the  dying,  the 
verdict  in  all  ages  and  lands,  the  verdict  of  ministers, 
physicians,  counselors,  and  friends  upon  both  men  and 
women,  "  Glad  to  go  hence."  Here  surely  is  matter  for 
reflection  and  conclusion.  Few  men  are  afraid  of  death 1 
as  the  battlefields  and  workshops  of  the  world  attest. 
Still  less  do  women,  staking  life  at  every  birth,  fear  death. 

1  "  For  the  fear  of  death  is  indeed  the  pretense  of  wisdom,  and  not  real 
wisdom,  being  a  pretended  knowledge  of  the  unknown ;  and  no  one  knows 
whether  death,  which  men  in  their  fear  apprehend  to  be  the  greatest  evil, 
may  not  be  the  greatest  good.  Is  there  not  here  conceit  of  knowledge, 
which  is  a  disgraceful  kind  of  ignorance  ?  "  Plato  [Socrates],  Apology, 
i,  327  (after  Jowett). 


THE   MEANING   OF   LIFE  487 

But  we  do  not  desire  it.1  We  have  accepted  as  a  matter 
of  common  sense,  of  religion,  and  of  philosophy  alike  the 
maxim  of  Bias,  "  So  ought  we  to  mete  out  this  life  as 
those  who  will  live  both  much  and  little."  Born  without 
choice,  we  accept  life  as  fate  and  are  happiest  in  our 
reconciliation  to  our  fate,  whatever  be  its  form.2 

This  acceptance  is  not  confined  to  the  working  masses 
or  to  the  leisure  classes,  but  is  common  to  all  men ;  and 
it  is  as  desirable  as  it  is  common.  It  must  not  be  con- 
fused with  any  proposed  acceptance  of  some  particular 
lot  in  life,  which  is  neither  common  nor  desirable.  In 
this  distinction  lies  the  entire  problem  of  education, 
both  personal  and  social,  for  as  there  is  an  education  of 
the  individual,  so  by  the  way  of  the  education  of  many 
individuals  is  there  also  an  education  of  society. 

Usually  caught  and  fastened  inextricably  in  the  insti- 
tutions, customs,  conditions,  and  traditions  of  environ- 
ing humanity,  the  individual  sees  in  death  release  from 
all  his  difficulties.  It  becomes  to  him,  as  it  were,  an  abso- 
lution. Moreover,  he  sees  in  death  the  possibility  of  a 
new  start,  for  he  has  learned  that  to  escape  from  the 
snares,  the  traps,  and  the  pitfalls  that  Nature  and  hu- 
manity set  in  the  way  of  every  man,  one  needs  powers 
beyond  those  actually  possessed.  In  the  life  after  death, 
he  sees  the  possibility  of  possessing  these  greater  pow- 
ers, for  men  are  not  blind  to  the  fact  that  success  is 
merely  a  balance  between  difficulties  and  skills.  Life 
is  a  battle,  —  he  fails  who  cannot  defeat  circumstances, 
whose  powers  do  not  match  his  opportunities,  for  every 
situation  is  an  opportunity.  Consequently,  our  desire 
is  not  for  easier  situations,  but  for  more  insight,  skill,  en- 
ergy, endurance,  courage,  in  dealing  with  them  ;  for  more 

1  The  last  words  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher  were,   "  Now  comes  the  mys- 
tery." This  expresses  the  common  sense  of  millions  who,  conscious,  die 
in  peace. 

2  Rosenkranz,  Philosophy  of  Education,  final  chapter. 


488       MOTIVES   AND  VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

income,  not  for  less  expenditure ;  for  more  life,  not  for 
less  experience.  Therefore,  as  soon  as  we  know  what 
education  is,  we  desire  it  :  knowing  that  undeveloped 
talent  is  like  iron  in  the  ore  under  ground  and  hoping 
that  in  us  is  the  talent  waiting  discovery,  development, 
and  use. 

By  its  faith  that  in  most  men  are  talents  awaiting  dis- 
covery, development,  and  preparation  for  use,  —  the  iron 
to  be  made  into  structural  steel  and  the  gold  into  cur- 
rent coin  of  exchange,  —  democracy  celebrates  human- 
ity, is  the  religion  of  humanity ;  and  establishes  the 
school  as  the  church  or  temple  of  this  religion.  But 
democracy  is  not  yet  fully  self-conscious,  or  entirely  es- 
tablished, or  altogether  victorious  over  its  foes.  There- 
fore, the  school  is  incomplete,  imperfectly  evolved,  not 
yet  transformed  from  the  image  in  which  it  was  origin- 
ally built.  Nor  as  yet  have  enough  able  men  worked 
out  the  solution  of  the  problem  of  how  much  universal 
education  really  should  accomplish.  Nor  does  democracy 
quite  understand  or  perfectly  support  the  school  in  which 
this  education  is  to  be  accomplished.  Nor  do  we  yet 
comprehend  that  for  each  one  of  us  the  entire  meaning 
of  life  is  education,  nothing  else  being  comparably  worth 
while. 

Life  is  the  end-in-itself,  a  centre  with  a  circumference 
beyond  the  horizons  of  finite  vision,  a  centre  of  a  circle 
whose  limits  may  no  man  set,  a  centre  of  a  sphere 
revolving  yet  permanent  in  the  universe  of  God  ;  but 
all  the  while  an  end-in-itself,  all  the  while  both  forth- 
looking  and  introspective,  the  eternal  contradiction  of 
getting  by  giving,  because  this  is  the  manner  of  life 
fashioned  and  followed  by  God  Himself,  of  whom  we 
know  nothing  whatever  more  than  this,  that  because  He 
is  whole,  one,  perfect,  He  made  us  like  Himself,  being 
unable  to  do  otherwise. 

This,  then,  is  education,  to  reach  out,  to  go  forth,  to 


THE    MEANING   OF   LIFE  489 

give  ;  and  thereby  to  grow.  And,  therefore,  we  hate  what- 
ever confines  us,  often  failing  to  see  that  such  confine- 
ment may  very  well  be  for  the  purpose  of  causing  us  to 
develop  in  the  round,  harmoniously,  completely,  rather 
than  to  grow  narrow,  discordant,  incomplete.  Prohibi- 
tion, inhibition,  sorrow,  struggle,  self-examination  :  these 
are  the  price  of  self-consciousness,  of  personality,  of  the 
education  of  the  spirit.  The  method  of  God  in  making 
a  man  is  evidently  to  be  thorough  ;  to  make  not  a  mist 
or  a  shadow,  but  a  solid. 

By  none  of  the  foregoing  am  I  to  be  understood  as 
defending  for  a  moment  or  by  a  single  word  the  evil 
that  I  know  in  the  world  ;  or  even  to  say  that  in  the  par- 
ticular instance,  I  understand  it.  Nor  do  I  underestimate 
it,  being  inclined  to  see  evil  rather  than  good.  But  I 
will  not  disfigure  these  pages  with  the  catalogue  of  these 
evils  under  the  sun.  There  is  iniquity  that  literally  is 
infamous,  not  to  be  spoken,  certainly  not  to  be  printed.1 
I  am  entirely  unable  to  understand  the  callous  willing- 
ness to  be  rich  amid  poverty,  innocently  good  amid  vice, 
cheerfully  learned  amid  ignorance ;  but  I  can  imagine 
that  for  reasons  sufficient  to  Himself  God  establishes 
this  present  order  of  human  society  as  a  necessary  stage 
toward  a  higher  order.  "  It  must  needs  be  that  offences 
come  ;  but  woe  to  that  man  by  whom  the  offence 
cometh."  2 

To  assert  that  the  whole  world  is  but  a  school  and 
that  the  entire  meaning  of  life  is  education  is  not  at  all 
to  assert  that  all  life  is  to  be  spent  in  school  or  even  in 
education  directly  by  others :  but  it  involves  asserting 

1  The  warning  of  Paul  of  things  not  to  be  named  set  a  new  example 
in  the  world  :  true  to  the  psychology  of  suggestion  and  true  to  the  neces- 
sary progress  of  mankind  in  decency  and  in  charity.     Romans,  Corinthi- 
ans, passim. 

2  Jesus,  Matthew,  Gospel,  xviii,  7.  Particularly  did  the  Master  condemn 
one  who  sins  against   "  little  ones  "  :  —  "  better  that  a   millstone  were 
hanged  about  his  neck,  and  he  were  drowned  in  the  depth  of  the  sea." 


490      MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

that  the  importance  of  the  School  is  far  greater  than 
even  democratic  society  yet  realizes.  Education  directed 
in  schools  short-circuits  experience,  anticipates  and  pre- 
pares for  difficulties,  and  elevates  as  well  as  solidifies 
the  soul  for  larger  and  higher  usefulness ;  but  it  cannot 
develop  non-existent  power,  nor  can  it  serve  as  substi- 
tute for  the  realities  of  the  life  outside  of  School,  the  life 
in  the  School  being,  however,  as  much  a  reality  as  any 
other. 

In  this  view,  the  School  is  a  continuing  institution  : 
one  no  more  "leaves  off"  education  than  religion  or 
government.  As  the  courts  of  government  are  always 
open  for  civil  litigation  and  for  criminal  trial ;  as  legisla- 
tion is  periodical,  and  administration  continual ;  as  the 
churches  of  religion  hold  regular  and  frequent  sessions  ; 
as  every  other  social  institution  is  for  adults  as  well  as 
youth  :  so  the  schools  of  education  and  of  culture,  its 
second  power,  will  always  be  open,  and  to  them  from 
time  to  time  men  and  women  will  resort  for  special  pre- 
paration for  the  new  opportunities  of  society  or  for  larger 
preparation  for  the  old.  The  individual  will  go  in  and 
out  of  the  School  when  occasion  offers,  as  matter  of 
course,  realizing,  not  merely  knowing  or  perhaps  but 
imagining,  that  in  this  manifold,  multiform  civilization, 
which  progresses  in  complexity  and  in  specialization  with 
a  rapidity  beyond  the  dreams  of  yesterday,1  the  useful 
man  must  in  education  equal  the  demands  and  the  priv- 
ileges of  his  times.  And  the  schools  of  education  will 
multiply  their  forms,  their  courses,  and  their  buildings, 
and  will  improve  their  methods,  their  personnel,  and  their 
organization  to  meet  the  social  needs.  Especially  will 
the  higher  and  the  special  schools  —  the  universities,  the 
institutes,  the  trade  schools  —  improve  and  increase. 
Ever  the  rate  of  increase  will  grow  until  education 
catches  up  with  civilization  and  conforms  to  the  full 

1  Bryce,  American  Commonwealth,  vol.  i,  p.  2. 


THE   MEANING   OF   LIFE  491 

requirements  of  society :  that  State,  Church,  School, 
Family,  Industry,  and  Culture  shall  be  equal  and  coor- 
dinate universal  institutions,  and  that  each  individual 
shall  be  fully  prepared  to  do  all  really  that  he  was  born 
with  the  possible  ability  to  do  for  God  and  for  human- 
ity. It  is  this  that  is  coming  to  pass,  this  that  is  break- 
ing up  the  present  transitional  economic  regime,  this 
that  is  the  noblest  aspiration  to  keep  men  alive  and 
joyous  in  an  age  of  vast  trouble,  of  excessive  change, 
and  of  straining  readjustment  ;  for  this  enters  into  the 
heart  of  the  meaning  of  life,  which  is  that,  in  this  pass- 
age in  Time  and  Space,  Society  and  Nature  shall  help 
the  individual  on  his  way  through  the  eternities  and  the 
infinities. 

The  meaning  of  life  may  be  explicated  by  reviewing 
the  cyclorama  of  its  institutions  and  the  history  of  its 
processes.  Taking  the  facts  as  they  are  as  evidence  that 
so  God  wills  them  to  be,  and  believing  that  as  far  as  they 
injure  neither  the  individual  nor  society  they  must  be 
good,  we  must  agree  that  the  true  life  is  always  the  life 
that  shares  most  largely  and  freely  in  all  their  good.1 
Such  a  review  has  been  attempted  in  these  pages,  with 
an  evaluation  of  the  good  things  of  life.  The  review  and 
evaluation  are  suggested  as  logical  consequence  of  the 
idea  of  universal  education. 

All  the  world  is  being  created,  corrected,  and  de- 
veloped by  ideas.  Each  new  idea  is  a  revelation.  Plato, 
who  appears  to  have  discovered  this  truth, made  thereby 
a  most  important  contribution  to  the  thought  of  man. 
These  truths  express  the  infinite  and  are,  therefore, 
essentially  incomprehensible  by  the  finite.  They  are  not, 
however,  for  this  cause  incredible.  From  the  finite  as 
from  a  window,  the  human  spirit  looks  out  upon  the 
infinite. 

In  this  book  is  organized  an  idea  not  wholly  new.    By 

1  Henderson,  Education  and  the  Larger  Life,  p.  370. 


492       MOTIVES    AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

bringing  the  latent  into  apparent  reality,  the  potential 
into  manifest  power,  education  converts  the  possibility 
of  each  human  being  into  actuality,  lifts  the  child, 
otherwise  a  mere  instrument  of  the  natural  forces  of 
body  and  of  soul,  to  the  higher  levels  of  personal  and 
social  culture,  and  thereby  maintains  civilization.  A 
sound  civilization  tenderly  cherishes  education  as  its 
life-blood.  Education  that  achieves  its  end,  which  is  pre- 
paration for  living  at  one's  best,  is  formal  and  independ- 
ent and  can  be  realized  only  by  a  formal  and  independent 
social  institution,  performing  this  function  in  a  certain 
isolation  from  all  other  social  institutions.  In  this  form, 
the  School  constitutes  a  complete  idea ;  and  the  idea  it- 
self takes  on  a  certain  newness  that  this  book  endeavors 
to  explain. 

The  idea  of  education  as  a  perfectly  differentiated, 
completely  integral,  and  absolutely  independent  social 
institution  appears  rational  and  therefore  authoritative. 
Making  no  appeal  to  sentiment,  emotion,  or  enthusiasm, 
this  idea  seems  to  possess  the  intellectual  power  of 
organizing  the  disorganized  facts,  principles,  customs, 
and  traditions  as  expressed  in  the  various  schools  of  to- 
day. It  appears  to  be  critical  only  that  it  may  be  con- 
structive. Moreover,  it  withdraws  from  the  field  of 
conflict  between  those  varied  confused  interests  of  man- 
kind which  are  not  yet  integrated  as  social  institutions, 
our  most  precious  interests,  —  our  concern  for  posterity, 
and  our  desire  that  our  own  product  and  record  shall 
not  perish.  And  it  seems  also  to  interpret  the  true  re- 
lations of  education  to  the  good  and  to  the  evil  of  civil- 
ization: the  good  it  repeats  and  multiplies,  the  evil  it 
encysts,  corrects,  or  destroys. 

Again,  this  idea  crowns  with  appropriate  dignity  what 
should  be  for  civilized  mankind  a  universal  enterprise. 
History  warrants  the  opinion  that,  in  the  absence  of 
such  dignity,  education  has  failed  to  do  for  earlier  civil- 


THE   MEANING   OF   LIFE  493 

izations  a  work  absolutely  essential  to  their  preservation. 
This  work  is  to  conspire  with  Nature  in  developing  a 
sufficient  number  of  sufficiently  competent  persons  to 
maintain  the  particular  civilization.  And  yet  again  this 
idea  conforms  to  the  modern  faith  that  it  is  possible  to 
find  and  to  develop  in  youth  many  powers  of  body  and 
of  soul  not  suspected,  even  denied,  by  merely  superficial 
observers.  In  other  words,  the  idea  is  generally  demo- 
cratic and,  therefore,  appeals  to  the  highest  article  in 
the  faith  of  man  in  humanity  developed  through  genera- 
tions of  undiscoverable  number.  By  the  universal,  inde- 
pendent, systematic  school,  democracy  intends  seriously 
to  help  each  and  every  individual  to  realize  the  most  of 
himself,  society  the  most  of  itself,  and  humanity  as  much 
as  possible  of  its  inherited,  inheritable,  and  attainable 
likeness  to  God. 

Finally,  the  idea  permits  an  evaluation  and  apprecia- 
tion of  the  motives,  methods,  and  machinery  of  education 
that  is  impossible  while  the  School  is  conceived  as  but 
a  partial,  dependent,  subordinate,  mediate,  and  in  a  certain 
aspect  despised  affair  that  concerns  children  only.1  By 
unity,  the  School  assumes  force  and  develops  energy ; 
it  therefore  becomes  plainly  what  hitherto  only  a  few 
have  desired,  the  copartner  with  religion,  government, 
and  family  in  establishing  the  intelligence,  activity,  and 
morality  of  mankind. 

This  School  is  as  yet  only  an  idea,  and  we  cannot 
criticise  its  actual  working.  However,  it  is  a  noteworthy 
and  highly  estimable  quality  of  every  idea  that  it  antici- 
pates reality  and  interprets  it  in  the  light  of  the  truth 
that  shall  be.  In  the  ideal  worlds  of  the  novelist,  of  the 
poet,  and  of  the  philosopher  are  set  forth  and  solved 

1  This  other,  old  idea  is  the  familiar  one  of  the  books.  I  am  not  writ- 
ing a  polemic :  if  I  were,  I  would  cite  a  score  of  such  books.  I  desire  only 
to  present  an  argument,  —  a  white  reasoning.  If  it  gives  light,  I  shall  be 
glad :  I  hope  that  it  gives  no  heat. 


494      MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN    EDUCATION 

many  human  problems  ;  and  the  solutions  are  more  clear 
than  those  of  actual  life,  and  quite  as  final.  Moreover, 
such  solutions  save  many  experiments.  As  Plato  taught 
us,  without  the  idea  no  thing  and  no  relation  of  things 
have  ever  been  or  ever  possibly  can  be.  It  is  this,  that, 
as  Aristotle  showed,  lifts  ideal  truth  above  actuality  and 
constitutes  metaphysics  as  the  cause  of  all  the  physical. 
Not  less  does  modern  thought  assert  that  the  physical 
or  spiritual  in  man,  Nature,  and  God  transcend,  con- 
dition, and  create  the  physical  or  material. 

As  for  the  working-out  of  the  idea  into  actuality, 
what  is  offered  here  is  only  by  way  of  suggestion  arid 
prognostication.  The  idea  is  already  very  common.  Ten 
thousand  minds  are  working  it  over ;  all  the  millions 
who  are  living  in  civilization  are  making  it  into  history. 
This  book  at  most  brings  the  theme  into  the  conscious- 
ness of  many  for  consideration,  discussion,  and  deliberate 
action. 

I  have  endeavored  to  reduce  to  concrete  terms  many 
opinions  that  otherwise  would  be  general  and  therefore 
vague,  basing  my  effort  upon  the  law  of  Delbceuf,  which 
may  be  summarized  as  follows :  "  Any  phenomena,  not 
translated  into  numbers,  always  leave  on  the  mind  the 
effect  of  mysticism."  1  I  have  endeavored  also  to  express 
my  opinions  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  Lotze,  which 
he  stated  in  these  terms  :  "How  absolutely  universal  is 
the  extent,  how  entirely  subordinate  the  mission  that 
mechanism  plays  in  the  world."  In  short,  I  have  tried 
to  show  that  complete  education  prepares  for  a  com- 
pletely organized  society  with  an  increasing  number  and 
variety  of  social  institutions  and  relations. 

The  individual  as  a  man  must  not  be  subordinated 
(helplessly  adjusted)  to  society  as  an  institution,  but  by 
exercise  in  it  must  be  made  sufficiently  superior  to 
society  to  be  able  to  contribute  to  its  life  and  progress. 

1  Quoted  by  Titchener,  Experimental  Psychology,  vol.  ii,  title-page. 


THE   MEANING   OF   LIFE  495 

The  typical  period  for  such  education  is  from  ten  to 
twenty  years  of  age  and  must  be  observed  for  all. 

The  missing  factor  in  all  former  civilizations  (which 
have  uniformly  perished)  has  been  universal  education 
of  the  youth,  both  boys  and  girls,  some  for  leadership, 
most  for  intelligent  and  hearty  fellowship  and  following. 
That  factor  we  should  supply.  All  studies,  exercises, 
and  regimens  must  be  evaluated  in  terms  of  their  con- 
tributions to  the  building  of  the  bodies  and  of  the  minds 
(or  souls)  of  men  for  work  and  for  happiness  as  social 
beings  on  this  earth  and  as  individual  lives  passing  from 
eternity  to  eternity. 

Intellect,  emotion,  will,  the  three  modes  of  mind,  may 
be  likened  to  a  line  of  wire,  forming  a  triangle  ;  through 
the  wire  passes  life  like  an  electric  current  ;  at  each 
angle,  a  relay  battery  (as  it  were  of  vitality  from  the 
body)  sends  new  life  into  the  circuit.  The  losses  of  life 
along  the  intellection  stretch  are  due  to  incomplete  or 
abandoned  ideas  ;  along  the  emotion  stretch,  to  diffused 
or  rejected  affections  ;  along  the  conation  stretch,  to  in- 
herited or  dissipated  impulses.  This  mechanical  analogy 
permits  ideas  to  be  considered  as  passing  into  affec- 
tions;  affections  into  intentions  ;  intentions  into  ideas  ; 
ideas  into  intentions ;  intentions  into  affections  ;  affec- 
tions into  ideas.  It  also  (mechanically)  relates  body  to 
mind.  Again,  the  doctrine  here  of  the  psychophysical 
parallelism  is  substantially  this  :  Bodily  vigor  is  a  cur- 
rent of  water,  as  it  were,  flowing  at  varying  rates,  in  vary- 
ing widths  and  depths,  while  mental  activity  is  a  current 
of  air,  as  it  were,  above  the  bodily  current,  resting  upon 
it,  and  moving  at  varying  rates,  frictionally  influenced  in 
consciousness,  in  subconsciousness,  and  in  unconscious- 
ness by  the  current  upon  which  it  rests.  From  concep- 
tion to  death,  soul  and  body  are  continually  associated  ; 
nor  does  man  know  which  current  is  originally  sprung 
from  the  other,  or  whether  or  not  in  origin  and  in  end 


496       MOTIVES   AND   VALUES    IN   EDUCATION 

they  are  or  are  not  one.  At  death,  the  bodily  force  may 
pass  with  the  spiritual  from  the  material  body ;  as  in- 
deed both  forces  may  enter  at  conception. 

One  may  not  deliberately  take  partial  views  of  educa- 
tion and  retain  the  integrity  of  his  soul.  In  this  book, 
therefore,  I  have  spoken  freely  of  political,  religious,  eco- 
nomic, and  cultural  society,  and  of  the  conditions  of  the 
personal  life.  It  is  valueless  to  think  of  education  save 
in  terms  of  the  ideal.  To  educate  for  society  as  it  is  is 
not  to  educate,  but  to  habituate,  and,  at  least  in  some  part, 
to  inoculate  with  the  virus  of  indifferentism.1  One  who 
is  so  instructed  as  to  believe  that  everything  that  is  in 
himself,  in  others,  and  in  society  is  right,  must  be  inr- 
mune  to  virtues,  to  ideals,  and  to  righteousness,  and  cal- 
lous towards  pity  and  charity.  Against  the  stoicism  of 
the  educational  schools  that  accept  this  world  as  their 
lord,  I  raise  this  protest.2 

In  the  terms  of  ideals,  I  cite  six  as  absolute  :  intelli- 
gence, efficiency,  morality,  science,  art,  and  philosophy  ; 
these  seem  to  form  an  ascending  scale.  The  first  three 
seem  to  be  absolutely  essential  to  education,  the  last 
three  to  culture. 

As  the  physician  discharges  his  patient  when  cured, 
so  the  educator  should  discharge  his  pupil  only  when 
educated.  Moreover,  as  the  physician  is  ready  always 
to  prescribe  and  to  care  for  his  patient,  so  the  educator 
should  always  be  ready  to  receive  and  to  assist  his 
pupil.  The  graduation  of  the  School  must  be  made  syn- 
chronous with  the  completion  of  the  formal  education, 

1  "  The  first  task  of  every  school  is  to  educate  the  child,  not  to  prepare 
for  life."    Hughes,  The  Making  of  Citizens,  p.  391. 

2  The  world  as  lord  is  the  standard  of  hypocrites  and  of  men-of-the 
world  alike.   They  masquerade  in  all  guises :  but  they  uncover  to  one  test. 
"  Now  is  the  accepted  time  [for  reform] :  now  is  the  day  of  salvation." 
And  they  (whom  Jesus  perfectly  understood)  reply,  "  Yes,  things  should 
be  better,  but  —  "    And  thereby  they  lose  their  own  souls.   And  sincere 
men  and  men-of-all-time  can  only  grieve  for  them  and  pass  on  to  duty. 


THE   MEANING   OF   LIFE  497 

but  it  should  not  be  synonymous  with  complete  education, 
a  thing  impossible  before  senility  sets  in.  Such  an  achieve- 
ment over  the  poverty,  the  ignorance,  and  the  malice  of 
many  means  yet  a  long  campaign,  with  hard  fighting. 

Incidentally,  all  lay  boards  of  control  for  educational 
affairs  will  be  done  away ;  and  the  School  under  profes- 
sional control  will  rise  coordinate  with  the  Church.  A 
similar  change  will  take  place  in  the  State,  in  which  the 
laity  will  control  only  in  financial  matters.  Legislation  as 
well  as  education  is  an  affair  for  experts  to  devise ;  and 
for  the  people  to  accept  or  to  reject  by  accepting  or  reject- 
ing the  legislators  themselves,  as  they  accept  or  reject 
physicians,  lawyers,  and  ministers  in  the  free  churches. 

The  School  differentiated  from  other  social  institu- 
tions and  so  integrated  can  face  seriously  the  question, 
"  Whether  among  national  manufactures  that  of  souls  of 
a  good  quality  may  not  at  last  turn  out  a  quite  leadingly 
lucrative  one. " l  It  will  enable  society  to  free  itself 
from  the  lost  "  little  ones,"  who  are  a  "  misery  to  them- 
selves, a  misery  to  the  community,  a  disgrace  to  civiliza- 
tion, and  an  outrage  on  Christianity,"  2  and  who  degen- 
erate into  the  criminals,  the  prostitutes,  the  adventurers, 
the  paupers,  and  the  lunatics,  perilous  to  themselves 
and  to  all  of  us. 

The  more  we  do  for  the  school,  the  more  we  shall  ex- 
pect from  it  :  and  the  more  we  expect  from  it,  the  more 
we  should  do  for  it.  American  society  has  now  reached 
the  question  whether  many  of  its  evils  have  become  too 
great  to  be  Considered  negligible  any  longer  or  are  re- 
mediable by  education  extended  far  beyond  the  present 
range.  Remedied  they  must  be,  unless  the  decline  be 
allowed  to  set  in. 

1  Ruskin,  Unto  this  Last,  §  40.    In  the  light  of  all  our  "new  know- 
ledge," this  proposition  is  no  longer  fanciful,  but  has  become  obligatory  as 
the  first  business  of  mankind. 

2  Dickens,  The  Uncommercial  Traveller. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

THE  following  works  are  suggested  to  emphasize  either  by  agree- 
ment or  by  opposition  the  various  propositions  and  accessory  con- 
siderations of  the  text.  In  this  sense,  and  in  this  only,  they  constitute 
a  bibliography  of  the  subject. 

Only  a  few  books  in  foreign  languages  are  included.  Scholars  able 
to  handle  a  complete  bibliography  irrespective  of  language  will  not 
require  even  this  brief  list.  These  few  are  included  as  suggestions  of 
a  great  body  of  European  authorities. 

It  should  be  obvious  that  certain  familiar  standard  works  are 
cited  merely  to  record  explicitly  what  line  of  reasoning  I  have  pre- 
ferred to  follow:  others  are  cited  because  they  are  the  significant 
curiosities  of  their  respective  fields.  The  brevity  of  the  list  seems  to 
render  unnecessary  more  than  one  citation  of  a  work. 

I.   NATURAL   SCIENCE 

i.  Theory. 

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Darwin,  Origin  of  Species. 
Descent  of  Man. 

Expression  of  Emotion  in  Man  and  Animals. 
Drummond,  Ascent  of  Man. 

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Duncan,  The  New  Knowledge. 
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A  Century  of  Science. 
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Lank  ester,  The  Kingdom  of  Man. 
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i.  History. 

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Evolution. 

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•2.  Social  Institutions. 

a.  Property. 

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Private  Property  and  Public  Welfare. 
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h.  General  Theory. 

Abbott,  The  Rights  of  Man. 

Bohm-Bawerk,  Karl  Marx  and  the  Close  of  his  System. 

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De  Brath,  Foundations  of  Success. 

De  Tocqueville,  Democracy  in  America. 

Engels,  Origin  of  the  Family,  Private  Property,  and  the  State. 

Forrest,  Development  of  Western  Civilization. 

Giddings,  Principles  of  Sociology. 

Gumplowicz,  Outlines  of  Sociology. 

Hauser,  L' ' Enseignement  des  Sciences  Sociales. 

Kidd,  Principles  of  Western  Civilization. 

Lane,  Level  of  Social  Motion. 

Le  Bon,  Psychology  of  Socialism. 

Essais  et  Melanges  Sociologiques. 
Maine,  Early  History  of  Institutions. 

Dissertation  on  Early  Law  and  Custom. 
Mallock,  Aristocracy  and  Evolution. 
Patten,  New  Basis  of  Civilization. 

Theory  of  Social  Forces. 
Posada,  Theories  Modernes  sur  les  Origines  de  la  Famitte,  de 

la  Societe  et  de  VEtat. 
Ross,  Social  Control. 
Small,  General  Sociology. 
Spencer,  Social  Statics. 

First  Principles. 
Descriptive  Sociology. 

Stein,  Die  Sociale  Frage  im  Lichte  der  Philosophic. 
Tarde,  Social  Laws. 
Tylor,  Anthropology:  Introduction  to  Study  of  Man  and 

Civilization. 


So6  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ward,  Psychic  Factors  in  Civilization. 
Outlines  of  Sociology. 
Dynamic  Sociology. 
Applied  Sociology. 

Wright,  Practical  Sociology. 
i.   Sex  Theory. 

Ellis,  Man  and  Woman. 

Forel,  Die  Sexuelle  Frage:  Eine  Naturwissenschaftliche, 
Psychologische,  Hygienische  und  Sociologische  Studie  fur 
Gebildete. 

Thomas,  Sex  and  Society, 
j.   Social  Pathology. 

Bloch,  The  Future  of  War. 

Davenport,  Hill,  and  Fowke,  Children  of  the  State. 

Drahms,  The  Criminal:  A  Social  Study. 

Ellis,  The  Criminal. 

Fern,  Sociologia  Criminale. 

Folks,  Care  of  Destitute,  Neglected,  and  Delinquent  Children. 

Gross,  Criminal  Psychology. 

Henderson,  Dependents,  Defectives,  and  Delinquents. 

Hunter,  Poverty. 

Ingersoll,  Crime  against  Criminals. 

Kellor,  Experimental  Psychology ;  Delinquents. 
Out  of  Work. 

Lombroso,  Delitti  Vecchi  e  Delitti  Nuovi. 

Lydstone,  Diseases  of  Society. 

Morrow,  Social  Diseases. 

Morselli,  Suicide. 

O'Dea,  Suicide. 

Russell  and  Rigby,  The  Making  of  Criminals. 

Schrenck,  Kriminal  Psychologische  und  Psychopathogische 
Studien. 

Warner,  American  Charities. 

White,  Problems  of  a  Great  City. 

Wines,  Punishment  and  Reformation, 
k.   Urban  and  Rural  Life. 

Booth,  Life  and  Labor  in  London. 

Emerson,  Society  and  Solitude. 

Fairchild,  Rural  Wealth  and  Rural  Welfare. 

Graham,  The  Rural  Exodus. 

Howe,  The  City  the  Hope  of  Democracy. 

Riis,  How  the  Other  Half  Lives. 

Smith,  Village  Life  in  China. 
Chinese  Characteristics. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  5°7 

Williams,  The  Middle  Kingdom. 
Woods  (editor),  The  City  Wilderness. 
Americans  in  Process. 
Zueblin,  A  Decade  of  Civic  Development. 
I.  Races. 

Commons,  Immigrants  in  America. 

Deniker,  Races  of  Men. 

Lefevre,  Race  and  Language. 

Ripley,  Races  of  Europe. 

Sergi,  The  Mediterranean  Race. 

Sinclair,  Aftermath  of  Slavery. 

Washington,  Future  of  the  American  Negro. 

III.    HUMAN   PHYSIOLOGY 

a.  Theory. 

Campbell,  Differences  in  the  Nervous  Organization  oj    Men 
and  Women. 

Cunningham,  Textbook  of  Human  Anatomy. 

Donaldson,  Growth  of  the  Brain,  a  Study  of  the  Nervous  Sys- 
tem in  Relation  to  Education. 

Foster,  Textbook  of  Human  Physiology. 

Foster  and  Balfour,  Elements  of  Embryology. 

Geddes  and  Thompson,  Evolution  of  Sex. 

Hibbert,  Life  and  Energy. 

Loeb,  Physiology  of  the  Brain. 

Lourbet,  Le  Probleme  des  Sexes. 

McMurrich,  Development  of  the  Human  Body. 

Martin,  The  Human  Body. 

Morris,  Human  Anatomy. 

Oppenheim,  Development  of  the  Child. 

Rowe,  Physical  Nature  of  the  Child. 

Shafer  (editor),  Human  Physiology. 

Walker,  Human  Physiology. 

Warner,  Nervous  System  of  the  Child. 
Study  of  Children. 

Wilson,  The  Cell  in  its  Development  and  Inheritance. 

b.  Pathology. 

Gould,  Biographical  Clinics. 

Ireland,  The  Blot  on  the  Brain:  Studies  in  History  and  Psy- 
chology. 
Through  the  Ivory  Gate :  Studies  in  History  and 

chology. 

Mental  Affections  of  Children. 
Mitchell,  Nerve  Paralysis. 
Neurasthenia. 


So8  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ranney,  Eye-Strain  in  Health  and  Disease. 
Sachs,  Nervous  Diseases  of  Children. 

c.  Psychophysics. 

Calderwood,  Relations  of  Mind  and  Brain. 

Carpenter,  Mental  Physiology. 

Dresser,  Health  and  the  Inner  Life. 

Manace'ine,  Sleep :    its  Physiology,  Pathology,  Hygiene,  and 

Psychology. 

Marwedel,  Conscious  Motherhood. 
Maudsley,  Physiology  of  Mind. 

Pathology  of  Mind. 

Responsibility  in  Mental  Disease. 
Preyer,  The  Senses  and  the  Will. 
Rogers,  Parallelism  of  Mind  and  Body. 
Scripture,  The  New  Psychology. 
Strong,  Why  the  Mind  has  a  Body. 

d.  Hygiene. 

Abbott,  Hygiene  of  Transmissible  Disease. 

Blaikie,  How  to  Get  Strong. 

Curtis,  Nature  and  Health. 

Hancock,  The  Physical  Culture  Life. 

Hutchinson,  Food  and  Dietetics. 

Lagrange,  Physiology  of  Bodily  Exercise. 

Le  Bosquet,  Personal  Hygiene. 

Lusk,  Science  of  Nutrition. 

Mackenzie,  Medical  Inspection  of  School  Children. 

Marcy,  Movement. 

Parke,  Hygiene,  with  American  Supplement. 

Sedgwick,  Principles  of  Sanitary  Science  and  the  Public  Health. 

Shaw,  School  Hygiene. 

Uffelman,  Domestic  Hygiene  of  the  Child. 

e.  Heredity. 

Guyau,  Education  and  Heredity. 

Horrige,  Dynamic  Aspects  of  Nutrition  and  Heredity. 

Patten,  Heredity  and  Social  Progress. 

Weismann,  Essays  on  Heredity. 

Woods,  Heredity  in  Royalty. 

f.  Therapeutics. 

Diefendorfer,  Clinical  Psychiatry  (based  on  Krapelin,  Lehrbuch 

der  Psychiatric). 
Hare,  Practical  Therapeutics. 
Mitchell,  Doctor  and  Patient. 

g.  Applications. 

Halleck,  Education  of  the  Central  Nervous  System. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  509 

Maclaren,  Physical  Education. 
O'Shea,  Dynamic  Factors  in  Education. 
Thompson,  Sex  in  Education. 
Tyler,  Growth  and  Education. 

IV.    PHYSIOLOGICAL   PSYCHOLOGY 

See  also  Human  Physiology  :  Psychophysics 

Ladd,  Elements  of  Physiological  Psychology. 
Morgan,  Introduction  to  Comparative  Psychology. 
Sanford,  Experimental  Psychology. 
Titchener,  Outlines  of  Psychology. 

Experimental  Psychology. 
Wundt,  Human  and  Animal  Psychology. 

V.    PSYCHOLOGY 

a.  General. 

Angell,  Psychology. 

Baldwin,  Mental  Development. 

Bowne,  Introduction  to  Psychological  Theory. 

Calkins,  Introduction  to  Psychology. 

Davis,  Elements  of  Psychology. 

Dewey,  Psychology. 

Galton,  Inquiry  into  Human  Faculty. 

Halleck,  Psychology  and  Psychic  Culture. 

Herbart,  Textbook  of  Psychology  (Smith,  transl.). 

Hobhouse,  Mind  in  Evolution. 

Hudson,  Evolution  of  the  Soul. 

James,  Psychology  (advanced  course). 

Kiilpe,  Outlines  of  Psychology. 

Royce,  Outlines  of  Psychology. 

Stout,  Groundwork  of  Psychology. 

Analytical  Psychology. 
Sully,  Outlines  of  Psychology. 
Thorndike,  Elements  of  Psychology. 
Witmer,  Analytic  Psychology. 

b.  Epochal. 

Compayre,  Intellectual  and  Moral  Development  of  the  Child. 
Later  Infancy  of  the  Child. 

Hall,  Adolescence:  its  Psychology  and  its  Relations  to  Physio- 
logy, Anthropology,  Sociology,  Sex,  Crime,  Religion,  and  Edu- 
cation. 

King,  Psychology  of  Child  Development. 

Kirkpatrick,  Fundamentals  of  Child  Study. 


Sio  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Sully,  Studies  of  Childhood. 
Tracy,  Psychology  of  Childhood. 

c.  Special. 

Adams,  The  ^Esthetic  Experience :  its  Meaning  in  a  Function. 
Carrel,  Analysis  of  Human  Motival  Psychology. 
Gallon,  Hereditary  Genius. 
Jastrow,  Psychology  of  the  Unconscious. 
McCosh,  The  Emotions. 
Maeterlinck,  The  Buried  Temple. 
Marholm,  Psychology  of  Woman. 

Norton,  Studies  in  Philosophy  and  Psychology:  The  Intellect- 
ual Element  in  Music. 
Rosmini,  Origin  of  Ideas. 
Scripture,  Thinking,  Feeling,  Doing. 
Sully,   Sensation  and  Intuition:  Studies  in  Psychology  and 

^Esthetics. 
Weininger,  Sex  and  Character. 

d.  Application. 

Bagley,  The  Educative  Process. 

Baldwin,  Psychology  applied  to  the  Art  of  Teaching. 

Betts,  Mind  and  Education. 

De  Garmo,  Interest  and  Education. 

Dexter  and  Garlick,  Psychology  in  the  Schoolroom. 

Harris,  Psychological  Foundations  of  Education. 

Home,  Psychological  Principles  of  Education. 

James,  Talks  to  Teachers  on  Psychology  and  Life's  Ideals. 

Judd,  Genetic  Psychology  for  Teachers. 

Le  Bon,  Psychologic  de  V Education. 

McClellan,  Applied  Psychology. 

Marion,  Legons  de  Psychologic  appliquee  a  V Education. 

Mulliner,  Application  of  Psychology  to  Education. 

Munsterberg,  Psychology  and  Life. 

Psychological  Revival :  Educational  Values,  U.  S.  Bureau  of 

Education,  1896. 

Thorndike,  Educational  Psychology. 
Human  Nature  Club. 

VI.    PHILOSOPHY 
a.  History. 

Erdmann,  History  of  Philosophy. 

Hoffding,  History  of  Philosophy . 

Ktilpe,  Introduction  to  Philosophy.  • 

Perry,  Approach  to  Philosophy. 

Rogers,  Student's  History  of  Philosophy. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  511 

Turner,  History  of  Philosophy. 
Ueberweg,  History  of  Philosophy. 
Weber,  History  of  Philosophy. 
Windelband,  History  of  Philosophy. 

b.  General  Theory. 

Bacon,  Novum  Organon. 

Cal dwell,  Schopenhauer* 's  System  in  its  Philosophical  Signifi- 
cance. 

Calkins,  The  Persistent  Problems  of  Philosophy. 
Cousin,  Lectures  on  the  Trite,  the  Good,  and  the  Beautiful. 
Dewhurst,  The  Investment  of  Truth. 
Dorman,  Ignorance. 
Fiske,  Through  Nature  to  God. 
Griggs,  The  New  Humanism. 
Hoffding,  The  Problems  of  Philosophy. 
Hyde,  Practical  Idealism. 

Knight,  Varia :  Studies  on  Problems  of  Philosophy  and  Ethics. 
Lotze,  Microcosmus. 
Naden,  Induction  and  Deduction. 
Otto,  Naturalism  and  Religion. 
Perrin,  Evolution  of  Knowledge. 
Plato,  Phado. 

Crito. 

Republic. 

Laws. 
Royce,   World  and  Individual:  Nature,  Man,  and  the  Moral 

Order. 

Seth  and  Haldane  (editors),  Essays  in  Philosophical  Criticism. 
Sturt,  Personal  Idealism. 
Tyler,  The  Whence  and  Whither  of  Man. 
Ward,  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism. 
Watson,  Philosophy  of  Kant  (abridged). 

c.  Logic. 

Baldwin,  Thought  and  Things:  Genetic  Logic. 
Fichte,  Science  of  Knowledge. 
Miiller,  Science  of  Thought. 

d.  Ethics. 

Alexander,  Moral  Order  and  Progress :  Ethical  Definitions. 
Aristotle,  Ethics. 

Baldwin,  Mental  Development:  Social  and  Ethical   Interpre- 
tations. 

Bosanquet,  Psychology  of  the  Moral  Self. 
Brentano,  Origin  of  the  Knowledge  of  Right  and  Wrong. 
Coit  (editor),  The  Message  of  Man. 


512  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Duprat,  Morals:  A  Treatise  upon  the  Psychological  Bases  of 
Ethics. 

Fite,  An  Introductory  Study  oj  Ethics. 

Gore,  Scientific  Basis  oj  Morality. 

Hobhouse,  Morals  in  Evolution. 

Ladd,  Philosophy  of  Conduct. 

LeVy-Bruhl,  Ethics  and  Moral  Science. 

Mezes,  Ethics  Descriptive  and  Explanatory. 

Mill,  Utilitarianism. 

Moulton,  The  Moral  System  0}  Shakespeare. 

Muirhead,  Philosophy  oj  Life. 

Nash,  Genesis  of  the  Social  Conscience. 

Nietzsche,  Genealogy  of  Morals. 

Thus  Spake  Zarathustra. 
Uebermensch. 

Paulsen,  System  of  Ethics. 

Pearson,  Ethic  of  Freethought. 

Royce,  Studies  oj  Good  and  Evil. 

Schmidt,  Ethik  der  Alien  Griechen. 

Scott,  Heredity  and  Morals. 

Seth,  Study  oj  Ethical  Principles. 

Sheldon,  Duties  in  the  Home. 

Taylor,  The  Problem  oj  Conduct. 

Thilly,  Introduction  to  Ethics. 

Watt,  Study  oj  Social  Morality. 

Wundt,  Ethics. 
e.  ^Esthetics. 

Bascom,  ^Esthetics  :  or  the  Science  of  Beauty. 

Bosanquet,  History  of  ^Esthetic. 

Day,  Science  of  ^Esthetics :    Nature,  Kind,  Laws,  and  Uses  of 
Beauty. 

La  Brouste,  Philosophic  des  Beaux  Arts. 

Lotze,  Outlines  oj  ^Esthetics. 

Saintsbury,  History  oj  Criticism  and  Literary  Taste  in  Eu- 
rope. 
/.   Application. 

Home,  Philosophy  oj  Education. 

Rosenkranz,  Philosophy  oj  Education, 
g.    Speculative. 

Alden,  A  Study  of  Death. 

James,  Human  Immortality. 

McConnell,  Evolution  of  Immortality. 

Meyers,  Human  Personality  and  its  Survival  of  Bodily  Death. 

Ostwald,  Individuality  and  Immortality. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  513 

Royce,  The  Conception  of  Immortality. 
Stockwell,  Evolution  of  Immortality. 
Stone,  A  Practical  Study  of  the  Soul. 

VII.    RELIGION 

a.  History. 

Beecher,  Conflict  of  Ages. 

Blanchard,   Twentieth    Century   Church  in  Early   Christian 
Conditions. 

Fisher,  History  of  the  Christian  Church. 

Hyde,  From  Epicurus  to  Christ. 

Menzies,  History  of  Religion, 
b   Theory. 

Adler,  A  Religion  based  on  Ethics. 

Baxter,  Christian  Ethics. 

Browne,  Christian  Morals. 
Religio  Medici. 

Clifford,  Ethics  of  Religion. 

Decline  of  Religious  Belief. 

Ethics  and  Religion,  A  Collection  of  Essays,  London,  1900. 

Fichte,  Critique  of  Religion. 

James,  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience. 

Martineau,  A  Study  of  Religion. 
Spiritual  Growth. 

Miiller,  Science  of  Religion. 

Sterrett,  The  Freedom  of  Authority. 

Taylor,  Holy  Living. 

Tolstoi,  My  Religion. 

World's  Parliament  of  Religions,  Chicago,  1893. 

c.  Criticism. 

Adams,  Church  and  Popular  Education. 

The  Bible  in  the  Public  Schools.    Cincinnati,  Report,  1870. 

Mathews,  The  Church  and  the  Changing  Order. 

Rauschenbusch,  Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis. 

Selleck,  New  Appreciation  of  the  Bible. 

Waring,  Christianity  and  its  Bible. 

d.  Application. 

Barrow,  Resist  not  Evil. 

Herman,  Faith  and  Morals. 

Peabody,  Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Question. 

Stevens,  The  Teaching  of  Jesus. 


514  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

VIII.    EDUCATION 

a.  History. 

1.  General  and  National. 

Boone,  Education  in  the  United  States :  its  History. 

Brown,  The  Making  of  Our  Elementary  Schools. 

Browning,  Introduction  to  History  of  Educational  Tlieories. 

Compayre,  A  History  of  Education. 

Davidson,  A  History  of  Education. 

Dexter,  A  History  of  Education  in  the  United  States. 

Kehr,  Geschichte  der  Methodik. 

Martin,  The  Chinese :  their  Education,  Philosophy,  and  Let- 
ters. 

Monroe,  Textbook  of  the  History  of  Education. 
Sourcebook  of  the  History  of  Education. 

Painter,  A  History  of  Education. 

Schreiber,  Das  Buch  vom  Kinde,  ein  Sammel-werk  fur  die 
wichtigsten  Fragen  der  Kindheit. 

Thwing,  History  of  Higher  Education  in  America. 

2.  Epochal  and  Special. 

Butler  (editor),  Education  in  the  United  States,  1900. 
Davidson,  Education  of  the  Greek  People. 
Gilman,  Launching  a  University. 
Johnson,  Old  Time  Schools  and  School  Books. 
Magnus  (editor),  National  Education,  a  Symposium  ;  Es- 
says toward  a  Constructive  Policy  (British). 
Rashdall,  Universities  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
Rice,  Public  School  System  of  the  United  States. 
Spiers,  School  System  of  the  Talmud. 
Woodward,  Education  during  the  Renaissance. 
Zimmer,  Methods  of  Education  in  America. 

b.  Description  and  Criticism.  , 

Adams,  Some  Famous  American  Schools. 
Birdseye,  Individual  Training  in  our  Colleges. 
Educational  Policy  of  the  State  of  India.    Report,  1900. 
Klemm,  European  Schools. 
Hughes,  Schools  at  Home  and  Abroad. 
Parsons,  French  Schools  through  American  Eyes. 
Paulsen,  German  Universities. 
Seeley,  Common  School  System  of  Germany. 
Smith,  Rural  Schools,  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education,  1884. 
Thirteen  Essays  on  Education  by  the  XIII.   London,  1891. 
Thomas,  History  and  Prospects  of  British  Education  in  Ger- 
many. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  515 

Washington,  Tuskegee  and  its  Work. 
Whewell,  Principles  of  English  University  Education. 
Winch,  Notes  on  German  Schools. 
e.   Theory. 

1.  General. 

Barnard,  Pestalozzi  and  his  Educational  System. 
Blow,  Symbolic  Education. 
Boone,  Science  of  Education. 

Bosanquet,  Education  of  the  Young  in  the  Republic  of  Plato. 
Buchner,  Kant's  Educational  Theory. 
Burnet,  Aristotle  on  Education. 
Clarke,  Self-Culture. 
Demolins,  L 'Education  Nouvelle. 
Dewey,  The  Child  and  the  Curriculum. 
Hadley,  Education  of  the  American  Citizen. 
Hanus,  Educational  Aims  and  Educational  Values. 
Henderson,  Jefferson's  Views  on  Public  Education. 
Herbart,  Science  of  Education. 

Holman,  Education:  Introduction  to  Principles  and  Psycho- 
logical 'Foundations. 
Keating,  Great  Didactic  of  Comenius. 
Lowell,  Rousseau  and  the  Sentimentalists. 
Mason,  School  Education. 
Maurice,  Learning  and  Working. 
Milton,  Tractate  on  Education. 

Nettleship,  Theory  of  Education  in  the  "Republic"  of  Plato. 
O'Shea,  Education  as  Adjustment. 

Dynamic  Factors  in  Education. 
Palmer,  The  New  Education. 
Parker,  Talks  to  Teachers. 
Sargent,  Physical  Education. 
Scott,  Organic  Education. 
Search,  An  Ideal  School. 
Spalding,  Means  and  Ends  of  Education. 
Welton,  Logical  Bases  of  Education. 

2.  Epochal. 

Barnard,  The  Kindergarten  and  Child  Culture. 
De  Garmo,  Principles  of  Secondary  Education. 
Gilman,  University  Problems. 
Gordy,  A  Broader  Elementary  Education. 
Hyde,  The  College  Man  and  the  College  Woman. 
Jacobi,  Primary  Education. 
Keith,  Elementary  Education. 
Peabody,  Lectures  to  Kinder gartners. 


5r6  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Thwing,  College  Administration. 

Wiggin  and  Smith,  The  Republic  of  Childhood. 
3.  Special. 

Britton,  Intensive  Study  of  the  Causes  of  Truancy. 

Burstall,  Education  of  Girls  in  the  United  States. 

Ham,  Mind  and  Hand,  Manual  Training  the  Chief  Factor 
in  Education. 

Hecker,  Scientific  Education. 

Herri ck,  Meaning  and  Practice  of  Commercial  Education. 

Industrial  Education:   U.  S.  Department  of  Labor,  1893. 

MacArthur,  Education  in  Relation  to  Manual  Industry. 

Scott,  Nature  Study  and  the  Child. 

Tadd,  New  Methods  in  Education. 

Vanderlip,  Education  and  Business. 

Ware,  Educational  Foundations  of  Trade  and  Industry. 

Warrington,  Agricultural  Science  :  its  Place  in  a  University 
Education. 

Woodward,  Manual  Training  in  Education, 
d.  Social  Aspects. 

Adams,  Three  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Addresses.     • 
Ashbee,  A  Few  Chapters  in  Workshop  Reconstruction  and  Citi- 
zenship. 

Button,  Social  Phases  of  Education  in  the  School  and  the  Home. 
Eliot,  More  Money  for  the  Public  Schools. 
Gilbert,  The  School  and  its  Life. 
Hanus,  A  Modern  School. 
King,  School  Recreations  and  Amusements. 
Palmer,  Higher  Education  and  a  Common  Language. 
Royce,  Deterioration  and  Race  Education. 
Vincent,  The  Social  Mind  and  Education. 

IX.    THE   ARTS 

a.  General  Theory. 

Barnard,  Science  and  Art. 

Caird,  University  Addresses  (on  science  and  art). 

Clarke,  Art  and  Industry. 

Guyau,  L'Art  au  Point  du  Vue  Sociologique. 

Nisbet,  Where  Art  Begins. 

Noyes,  The  Gate  of  Appreciation. 

Ruskin,  Unto  This  Last. 

Crown  of  Wild  Olive. 

Munera  Pulveris. 

The  Eagle's  Nest. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  517 

Stevenson,  The  Gate  Beautiful. 

Sturgis,  A  Study  of  the  Artist's  Way  of  Working. 

Tolstoi,  What  is  Art  ? 

b.  History. 

Gross,  Beginnings  of  Art. 

Haddon,  Evolution  of  Art. 

Him,  Origins  of  Art. 

Waldstein,  Study  of  Art  in  Universities. 

c.  Literature. 

1.  Language. 

Trench,  Study  of  Words. 

Whitney,  Life  and  Growth  of  Language. 

2.  Application.  , 

Arnold,  Culture  and  Anarchy. 
Lanier,  Principles  oj  Poetry. 
Loliee,  Comparative  Literature. 
Posnett,  Comparative  Literature. 
Stedman,  Poets  of  America. 

d.  Music. 

Parry,  Evolution  of  the  Art  of  Music. 
Henderson,  Story  of  Music. 

Modern  Musical  Drift. 

e.  Painting,  Sculpture,  and  Architecture. 

Eidlitz,  Nature  and  Function  of  Art,  especially  Architecture. 
Morris,  Architecture,  Industry,  and  Wealth. 
Robinson,  Modern  Civic  Art. 
Ross,  Theory  of  Pure  Design. 
Ruskin,  Modern  Painters. 

Principles  of  Art  Education. 

Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture. 

Van  Pelt,  A  Discussion  of  Composition  as  applied  to  Architecture. 
/.  Application. 

Morris,  Signs  of  Change. 


•  X.   WORLD    AND    AGE 

Addams,  Newer  Ideals  of  Peace. 
Beecher,  Life  Thoughts. 

Proverbs  from  Plymouth  Pulpit. 
Birrell,  Obiter  Dicta. 
Bosanquet,  Essays  and  Definitions. 
Carlyle,  Sartor  Resartus. 
Donald,  Expansion  of  Religion. 


5i8  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Emerson,  Man  the  Reformer. 

Conduct  oj  Life  :  Fate. 
Fran  eke,  German  Ideals  of  To-day. 
Gordon,  Social  Ideals  of  Tennyson. 
Jefferies,  The  Story  oj  my  Heart. 
Lowell,  Democracy. 
Miinsterberg,  The  Americans. 
Nordau,  Degeneration. 

Sterling,  Essays  and  Tales  :  Thoughts  and  Images. 
Wendell,  American  Ideals. 

XI.    BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Columbia  University  Bulletin,  Books  on  Education. 
Educational  Review,  Annual  Bibliographies,  New  York  State 

Library  Annual  Reports. 

Encyclopedia  Britannica  (ninth  and  tenth  (combined)  editions). 
Hall,  Bibliography  of  Education. 
Monroe,  Bibliography  of  Education. 
Poole's  Index  to  Periodical  Literature. 
Reports,  National  Educational  Association. 
Reports,  United  States  Bureau  of  Education. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


ABRAHAM,  72. 

Academic  freedom.  See  Freedom,  aca- 
demic. 

Academy,  the  word,  116. 

Acquired  characteristics.  See  Charac- 
teristics, acquired. 

Activity,  perils  of  unintelligent,  243- 
245  ;  desire  of  children  for  productive, 
252,  253  ;  result  to  home,  from  loss 
of  industrial,  253. 

Acton,  Lord,  the  notes  to  his  Study 
of  History,  329  n. ;  quotation  from, 
377 ;  his  Study  of  History,  quoted, 
407. 

Addison,  Joseph,  his  Cato,  quoted, 
70. 

Administration,  school,  183 ;  dangers 
in,  191,  192. 

Adolescence,  secondary,  15,  16;  changes 
of,  375,  376;  primary  motives  man- 
ifested in,  446. 

Adults,  primary  motives  manifested 
in,  446. 

Advice,  sources  of  good,  81. 

jEschylus,  72. 

Alexander  the  Great,  71,  249. 

Altruism,  egoism  and,  479,  480. 

Ambition,  intensified  by  poverty,  98. 

America,  temper  of  the  present  age  in, 
out  of  harmony  with  historical  educa- 
tion, 139, 140  ;  delusion  regarding  her 
many  cities,  450  n.,  451  n. 

Americanization  of  immigrants,  44. 

Amiel,  Henri  Fred6ric,  his  Journal, 
quoted,  470  n. 

Animal  spirits,  as  a  bar  to  education, 
no. 

Animals,  educability  of,  4. 

Anthropology,  certain  facts  of,  beyond 
our  knowledge,  61,  62. 

Apperception,  209. 

Appropriations,  school,  limits  set  to, 
134  ;  increase  in,  necessary,  438-441. 

Aristotle,  26,  72,  72  n.,  142,  352,  353. 

Arithmetic,  moral  teaching  of,  392  ; 
not  a  proper  study  for  children,  405, 
406. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  his  Sick  Man  of 
Bokhara,  quoted,  13  ;  his  The  Better 
Part,  quoted,  74  n  .;  quotation,  from, 
437  n. 

Art,  Plato's  distinction  between  skill 
and,  136  n. ;  relation  between  science 


and,  141,  412,  413  ;  subjects  belonging 
to,  165  ;  subdivisions  of,  165  ;  purpose 
of  the  school  arts,  165-167;  its  rela- 
tion to  efficiency,  265,  392,  424  ;  dis- 
tinction between  occupation  and,  302  ; 
vastness  of  the  field  of,  329,  330,  413  ; 
the  world  not  concerned  with,  330  ; 
tyranny  of,  331;  coalescing  of  one  with 
another,  332  ;  its  originating  force, 
332,  334  ;  without  individuality,  334  ; 
its  relation  to  life,  334.  335,  336,  337  ; 
the  duty  of  society  towards,  335,  336  ; 
training  for  women  in,  336  ;  democracy 
of,  337  ;  elements  entering  into  the 
technique  of,  338,  339  ;  triumphs  of, 
higher  than  those  of  science,  339  ; 
the  test  of  pseudo-art,  340  ;  a  mental 
quality  or  method,  385,  386  ;  modesty 
of,  402  ;  inappropriateness  of,  in  the 
formal  education  of  children,  412; 
difficulty  of  classifying,  413  ;  the 
lesser,  suited  to  children,  414,  415  ; 
higher  values  of,  416. 

Artist,  the,  relation  between  the  arti- 
san and,  302,  332,  333  ;  obligations  of, 
329,  330  ;  method  of,  333,  334  ;  crea- 
tive moods  of,  339. 

Athens,  the  morality  of,  278. 

Augustine,  St.,  quoted,  82  ;  his  Hom- 
ilies, quoted,  159  n. 

Automobiles,    French  and  American, 

335- 
Avarice, 


Bacon,  Francis,  his  contribution  to  phi- 
losophy, 353  ;  quotation  from,  383. 

Baldwin,  James  Mark,  his  Mental 
Development,  quoted,  2,  58  n. 

Ball,  W.  W.  R.,  his  History  of  Mathe- 
matics, quoted,  355.  • 

Balliet,  Thomas  M.,  quoted,  22911. 

Barbarians  or  rustics,  their  invasion 
of  the  cities,  454,  455  ;  tendency  to 
revert  to  condition  of,  455;  their 
desire  for  prosperity  and  ease  of  life, 
455,  456  ;  their  ideals,  456,  457  ;  their 
principles,  457-459;  a  menace  to  the 
city,  459  ;  so  characterized  by  their 
ideas,  459,  460  ;  city  millionaire  and 
country  farmer  somewhat  above,  459  ; 
the  half-barbarian,  459,  460. 

Baxter,  Richard,  his  Christian  Ethics, 
quoted,  470  n, 


522 


INDEX 


Beauty,  a  matter  of  the  heart,  29 ; 
meaning  of  the  word,  141  n. 

Beecher,  Henry  Ward,  his  Life 
Thoughts,  quoted,  82,  465  n.  ;  quoted, 
485  ;  his  last  words,  487  n. 

Biography,  defects  of,  428. 

Biology,  its  importance  in  the  science 
of  education,  142. 

Birdseye,  Clarence  Frank,  his  Individ- 
ual Training  in  our  Colleges,  quoted, 
423,  468  n. 

Bismarck,  71,  444  n. 

Bluntschli,  John  Kaspar,  a  sentence 
from  his  Theory  of  the  State  consid- 
ered phonically,  234. 

Boards  of  education,  composed  of  lay- 
men, 1 19  n. ;  constitution  and  jurisdic- 
tion of,  in  American  public  schools, 
131,  134,  135,  186,  187,  187  n. ;  mem- 
bers of,  influenced  by  their  powers, 
133  ;  election  of,  in  Colorado  and  St. 
Louis,  135  n.;  one  justification  of  their 
policy,  169  ;  disadvantages  of  large 
membership  in,  198,  199. 

Boards  of  Trustees,  constitution  and 
power  of,  128,  128  n.,  129,  i2gn. ;  sel- 
dom controlled  by  educators,  128, 
129. 

Body,  training  of  the,  5,  6,  29  ;  impor- 
tance of  knowledge  concerning,  206; 
conditioned  by  the  mind,  245,  246, 
248,  495;  periodicity  of,  281,  282. 

Book  of  the  Dead,  70. 

Brook,  his  Ye  Cannot  Come,  quoted, 
163. 

Brotherhood  of  man,  results  accom- 
plished by  the  idea  of,  377. 

Brown,  Elmer  Ellsworth,  his  Making 
of  our  Middle  Schools,  quoted,  115. 

Brown,  John,  abolitionist,  73. 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  his  Religio 
Medici,  quoted,  468;  his  Christian 
Morals,  quoted,  470  n.,  471  n. 

Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  247  n. ; 
her  Aurora  Leigh,  quoted,  203  ;  her 
Cry  of  the  Children,  quoted,  304. 

Browning,  Robert,  his  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra, 
quoted,  370. 

Bruno,  Giordano,  philosophy  of,  353. 

Bryant,  William  Cullen,  his  Forest 
Hymn,  quoted,  19. 

Buddha,  his  comprehension  of  the 
world-spirit,  162. 

Burke,  Edmund,  his  theory  regarding 
the  State,  293,  294. 

Burns,  Robert,  his  Is  there  for  Honest 
Poverty?  105  n. 

Business,  when  it  tends  to  domestic 
peace  of  society,  34  n. ;  its  struggle 
with  the  State  for  control  of  society, 
43 ;  its  relation  to  culture,  46 ;  delu- 
sions regarding,  46,  47,  47  n.;  a  war- 
fare, 46, 47, 310 ;  the  theory  ot,  47,  48 ; 


morality  gaining  upon,  48  ;  good  and 
evil  features  of,  51;  failures  in,  77 ; 
the  training  demanded  by,  135,  136; 
masters  of,  not  result  of  this  training, 
136;  sins  of,  304,  305;  distinction 
between  occupation  and,  307,  308 ; 
characteristic  purpose  of,  309,  311; 
ethics  of,  310;  truth  and  promise- 
keeping  would  wreck,  310,  311. 

Business  schools.  See  Commercial 
schools. 

Busy  work,  431. 

Butler,  Nicholas  Murray,  his  Meaning 
of  Education,  quoted,  2,  386  n. 

Byron,  Lord,  72,  73. 

Caesar,  Caius  Julius,  71,  73 ;  his  failure, 
274. 

Caldwell,  William,  his  Schopenhauer's 
System  in  its  Philosophical  Signifi- 
cance, quoted,  143  n.,  349  n.,  350  n. 

Calumny,  attitude  of  educated  man  to- 
ward, 469. 

Canvassing  agents,  309. 

Capital  punishment,  50. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  his  essay  on  Labor, 
quoted,  383  ;  his  Sartor  Resartus, 
quoted,  59  n. 

Caste,  99,  100. 

Catherine,  Empress  of  Russia,  33. 

Cave,  Plato's  use  of,  as  illustration,  3. 

Celibacy,  of  Roman  Catholic  priests, 
effect  of,  on  scholarly  class,  126,  127 ; 
women  teachers  compelled  to,  170, 
183;  a  bar  to  successful  teaching,  170. 

Census,  desirability  of  adopting  eco- 
nomic distinctions  in,  307,  308. 

Changes,  physical,  before  birth,  375  ; 
at  adolescence,  375,  376  ;  in  social  in- 
stitutions, 376,  376  n.,  377,  380. 

Characteristics,  acquired,  26  n.,  32, 
32  n. ;  classification  of  human,  87  ; 
possessed  by  a  community,  87,  88. 

Charity,  a  moral  law  of  culture,  300.    ' 

Charlemagne,  249. 

Chicago  School  of  Education,  253. 

Children,  Society's  endeavor  to  pro- 
tect, 9;  natural  aspirations  of,  122, 
123  ;  qualities  of,  persisting  in  men  of 
genius,  123  ;  should  own  property, 
251  ;  their  desire  for  productive  activ- 
ity, 252,  253 ;  the  church  and,  256, 
257;  their  training  for  efficiency  in 
government,  259,  260 ;  for  economic 
efficiency,  269,  270  ;  for  military  serv- 
ice, 270,  271 ;  their  relation  to  the 
family,  289;  training  of  powers  of  ob- 
servation in,  386,  387  ;  regimentation 
not  to  be  required  of,  386,  387,  388  ; 
moral  training  of,  in  the  school,  389- 
393  ;  arithmetic  not  a  proper  study  for, 
405,  406  ;  history  as  such  not  suited 
to,  407,  408,  429,  432 ;  sciences 


INDEX 


523 


as  such  not  suited  to,  409, 410 ;  minds 
of,  compared  with  the  adult,  409, 
410;  materials  of  science  belong  to, 

410  ;  country-life  the   right  of,    410, 

411  ;  inappropriateness  of  the  higher 
arts   in   formal    education   of,    412  ; 
lesser  arts  suited  to,  414,  415  ;  lack 
of  coordination  in,  414,  415  ;  physical 
education  of,  416-419,  422  ;  primary 
motives  manifested  in,  446. 

Christ,  the  variety  of  his  experiences, 
162  ;  his  comprehension  of  the  world- 
spirit,  162  ;  sinless,  but  not  complete, 
274. 

Church,  the,  aims  of,  primarily  per- 
sonal, 35  ;  not  synonymous  with  reli- 
gion, 35  n. ;  self-abnegation  inculcated 
by,  39,  40;  origin  of,  39  ;  disintegration 
of,  43  ;  subordination  of  the  American 
State  to,  45,  45  n.;  dependence  of  the 
School  upon,  126-128  ;  expansion  of 
religion  through  disintegration  of, 
255  ;  children  and,  256,  257  ;  deprived 
of  its  economic  functions,  256,  258  ; 
its  relation  to  religion,  290-293  ;  ne- 
cessary to  the  preservation  of  religion, 
292  ;  its  duty  to  the  individual,  292, 

^.2?3- 

Citizens,  or  natives   of  the  city,  454, 

455- 

Citizenship,  preparation  for,  not  the 
paramount  aim  of  the  School,  44,  103  ; 
training  for,  in  a  democracy,  259,  260  ; 
girls  given  no  preparation  for,  261  ; 
moral  laws  of,  295. 

City,  three  proper  functions  of,  410; 
health  incompatible  with  life  in,  421; 
reaction  against,  421,  422  ;  its  ar- 
tificial nature,  449,  450  ;  character  of 
the  ideal,  450,  451,  462  ;  impossibility 
of  homes  in,  451  ;  movement  from  the 
country  toward,  454,  455  ;  in  danger 
from  the  barbarian,  459. 

Civilization,  immaterial  requirements  of 
an  enduring,  10  ;  necessity  for  a  leisure 
class  in,-  11-13,  36>  93!  dependent 
upon  education,  52,  89,  90  ;  its  me- 
chanical processes,  53  ;  definitions  of, 
54  ;  cyclical  character  of,  54  n. ;  its 
quality  depends  upon  its  morality,  54, 
55,  59,  90;  good  and  bad,  68,69; 
three  perils  of,  227,  228  ;  health  and, 
359-364  ;  forces  arrayed  against,  460; 
the  warfare  of,  461  ;  its  progress  by 
conflict,  462  ;  analogy  between  growth 
of  forests  and,  476,  477  ;  progress 
away  from  nature,  the  true,  479,  -480  ; 
abominations  of  modern,  480  ;  cure  of, 
481,  482  ;  specific  conditions  attend- 
ant upon  true,  483  ;  failure  of  educa- 
tion to  maintain  earlier  forms  of,  492, 
493.  495- 

Classes,  infertility  of  the,  91,  92  ;  kept 


up  by  variants  from  the  masses,  91 ; 
maintenance  of,  essential,  92. 

Cleanliness,  the  duty  of  personal,  279. 

Cleopatra,  73. 

Clergy,  restrictions  placed  upon,  by  Ro- 
man Catholic  Church,  33.  See  also 
Priests. 

Clifford,  William  Kingdon,  his  Ethics 
of  Religion,  quoted,  8  n.;  his  Decline 
of  Religious  Belief,  quoted,  8  n.;  his 
Essays,  quoted,  23  n. 

Coit,  his  Christian  Ethics,  quoted,  6  n. 

Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  his  Aids  to 
Reflection,  quoted,  37. 

College,  purpose  of,  116.  See  also  Uni- 
versity. 

Colorado,  election  of  boards  of  educa- 
tion in,  135  n. 

Columbus,  Christopher,  73. 

Commerce,  schools  of.  See  Commercial 
schools. 

Commercial  schools,  135,  136. 

Communities,  responsibilities  of,  373, 
374  ;  the  individual  moulded  by,  374. 

Compulsory  education,  15,  135,  135  n., 
183,  184. 

Conscience,  nature  of,  8,  8  n.,  57. 

Consciousness,  evolution  of,  156,  I56n.; 
the  first  evidence  of  psychical  pro- 
gress, 158,  159. 

Consciousness  of  kind,  a  fundamental 
principle  of  sociology,  272,  374. 

Constants,  in  education,  424-428. 

Constitutional  conventions,  181,  181  n. 

Copernicus,  73. 

Corporations,  democratic,  future  possi- 
bilities of,  48. 

Cost,  threefold,  of  education,  106-108. 

Cost  of  living,  increase  in,  439,  440. 

Country,  life  in,  the  right  of  childhood, 
410,  411;  educative  influences  now 
reaching,  45 1,  452  ;  seat  of  agriculture 
and  forestry,  462.  See  also  Villages. 

Courage,  a  test  of  culture,  299 ;  the 
basic  virtue,  299  n. 

Covetousness,  159,  15911. 

Crime,  its  relation  to  sin,  150;  com- 
mitters  of,  152,  153. 

Criminals,  sane  and  insane,  50  n. ;  duty 
of  education  toward,  94 ;  civilization 
and,  483. 

Criminology,  has  much  in  common  with 
pedagogy,  50  n. ;  its  importance  to  the 
science  of  education,  149,  152;  the 
three,  functions  of,  151,  152. 

Critics,  264,  264  n.,  265  n. 

Crossus,  73. 

Cromwell,  71  ;  his  failure,  275. 

Culture,  its  modes  of  expression,  45  ; 
self-development  the  motive  of,  46 : 
its  relation  to  education,  46,  88,  89, 
342  ;  to  Property  and  Business,  46 ; 
relation  of  individual  to  racial,  65  ; 


524 


INDEX 


failure  of  most  persons  in,  77 ;  its 
imperfect  control  of  the  university, 
128,  129  ;  may  be  distinguished  from 
pseudo-culture,  145  n.  ;  dependence  of 
civilization  upon,  227  ;  moral  laws  of, 
298-302  ;  seven  ideals  of,  367. 

Curiosity,  445. 

Curriculum,  arrangement  of,  by  subjects 
or  grades,  430. 

Cycles,  the  method  of  progress,  155. 

Dante,  41  n.,  71,  160;  a  failure  to  his 
contemporaries,  74,  75  ;  his  Inferno, 
quoted,  442  ;  his  representation  of 
falsifiers  and  traitors,  460  n. 

Dartmouth  College  case,  130  n. 

Darwin,  Charles  Robert,  142  n.,  354; 
his  Origin  of  Species,  quoted,  180. 

Davidson,  Thomas,  his  History  of  Edu- 
cation, quoted,  138,  196  n. 

Death,  in  the  eyes  of  old  age,  369,  370  ; 
attitude  of  the  educated  man  toward, 
473,  474  ;  common  attitude  toward, 
486,  487;  quotation  from  Plato  re- 
garding, 486  n. 

Defeat,  education  by,  454. 

Defective  classes,  duty  of  education  to- 
ward, 94. 

Definition,  importance  of,  239,  240,  241. 

Delboeuf,  quotation  from,  494. 

Democracy,  education  and,  2,  140,  186, 
187,  488,  493  ;  the  constitutional  con- 
vention 'the  fundamental  legislature 
of,  i8t. 

Demosthenes,  124. 

Depravity,  an  evidence  of  incomplete 
education,  175,  176. 

Descartes,  Rene,  353,  355. 

Development,  physical,  the  limit 
reached,  61,  63;  likeness  of  educa- 
tional to  the  typical  human,  156; 
psychical,  of  the  individual,  156-160. 

De  Vries,  Hugo.    See  Vries,  Hugo  de. 

Dewey,  John,  253. 

Dickens,  Charles,  his  Uncommercial 
Traveller,  quoted,  497. 

Disease,  humanity's  indebtedness  to, 
149. 

Disraeli,  Benjamin,  Earl  of  Beacons- 
field,  his  Manchester  Speech  (1866), 
quoted,  31. 

District  of  Columbia,  disfranchised 
citizens  of,  259  n. 

Divorce,  76. 

Domestic  science  and  art,  schools  for 
training  in,  125. 

Dowry,  38  n. 

Drama,    ignored  by   the  School,   272, 

273; 

Drawing,  a  constant  in  education,  426. 
Dryden,   John,    his   Oliver   Cromwell, 

quoted,  105  n. 
Duality  of  man,  education  and,  5,  22  n. 


Educability,  85,  89;  of  animals,  4; 
climactic  years  of,  14,  15  ;  unaffected 
by  physical  conditions,  race,  sex,  or 
time,  62,  63  ;  of  adult  men,  67. 

Education,  democracy  and,  2,  140,  186, 
187,  488,  493  ;  conscious  creatures 
capable  of,  4  ;  nature  of,  in  the  genius, 
5  ;  perfection  of,  impossible,  5  ;  pur- 
poses of,  in  respect  to  the  duality  of 
man,  5,  6,  22  n. ;  progress  of  the  in- 
dividual, the  aim  of,  7  ;  must  provide 
for  the  work  of  the  world,  10;  when  it 
should  begin  and  end,  13-16  ;  both 
society  and  solitude  necessary  factors 
in,  17-20  ;  terms  used  in,  often  re- 
flect methods,  20, 21 ;  must  seek  truth, 
23,  24,  121,  122,124,  226 ;  recapitu- 
lation theory  in,  24-28 ;  orderliness 
the  proper  manner  of,  29,  29  n. ;  its 
relation  to  culture,  46,  88,  89,  342  ; 
to  teaching,  52  ;  essential  problem  of, 
60 ;  the  theory  that  it  is  never  con- 
sciously achieved,  60  ;  character  the 
final  test  of,  61  ;  results  of,  in  the 
race,  63,  64,  65;  inevitable,  65,  66; 
voluntary,  66  ;  familiar  evidences  of, 
67  ;  good  and  bad,  67-69  ;  must  de- 
velop a  successful  life,  70  ;  must  dis- 
criminate between  success  and  failure, 
8 1  ;  its  readiness  to  propagate  new 
ideas,  88  ;  its  purpose  toward  the  in- 
dividual and  the  community,  89;  must 
help  to  maintain  the  classes,  92  ;  its 
task  with  the  masses,  93  ;  its  obliga- 
tion toward  genius,  94 ;  toward  the 
defective  and  criminal  classes,  94  ;  its 
duty  in  evaluation,  94,  95  ;  social 
motives  in,  97,  98  ;  education  toward 
ends  unwarranted,  99-104  ;  dis- 
belief in  the  reality  of,  104;  in  the 
possibility  of,  85,  105  ;  objection  to 
cost  of,  106-108 ;  personal  causes 
for  failure  of,  108-110;  system  of, 
in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  126, 
127,  129;  social  forces  necessary  to 
produce  a  formal  system  of,  137 ; 
changes  in  the  mechanism  of,  138, 
139,  140;  an  art  or  a  science?  141, 
142  ;  bases  of  the  science  of,  142-155  ; 
purposes  of,  163;  materials  and  exer- 
cises employed  by  the  formal  system 
of,  164-167;  some  probable  fea- 
tures of,  if  conducted  by  educators, 
175-179;  the  problem  of  habit  in, 
231  ;  the  arts  in,  265,  412-416;  effi- 
ciency in,  265,  266  ;  ideals  of,  367, 
384,  392,  393,  483,  484 ;  method  of, 
depends  on  purpose  of,  394-396 ; 
true  method  of,  psychological,  396  ; 
pseudo-methods  in,  396,  397 ;  place 
of  literature  and  language  in,  397- 
404,  425  ;  of  mathematics,  404,  427. 
427  n. ;  of  history,  407-409 ;  of 


INDEX 


525 


science,  409-412,  425;  of  health,  416- 
419,  422;  of  play,  424;  of  nature- 
study,  425  ;  of  music  and  drawing, 
426  ;  electives  in,  428,  429  ;  motive 
of,  479;  as  the  cure  of  civilization, 
482,  492,  493  ;  its  failure  to  main- 
tain earlier  civilizations,  492,  493,  495. 
See  also  Compulsory  education ; 
School. 

Educationist,  use  of  the  term,  uS. 

Educators,  use  of  the  term,  118  ;  boards 
of  trustees  seldom  controlled  by,  128, 
129 ;  seldom  on  boards  of  education, 
132  ;  results  of  large  powers  delegated 
to,  133  ;  the  School  should  be  con- 
trolled by,  298  ;  moral  law  for,  298  ; 
their  duty  to  Society,  433  ;  adequate 
salaries  for,  440,  441  ;  analogy  be- 
tween leaders  and,  453  n.  See  also 
Teachers. 

Efficiency,  relation  between  morality, 
literacy  and,  217,  218,  221,  223,  226, 
227,  230,  231,  264  ;  as  an  ideal  in  edu- 
cation, 219  ;  economic  nature  of,  220, 
221 ;  method  of  attaining,  221,  222  ; 
mental  attitude  toward,  243  ;  condi- 
tioned by  intelligence,  243-245  ; 
relation  of  health  to,  245-247  ;  rela- 
tion of  art  to,  265,  392,  424  ;  in  ed- 
ucation itself,  265,  266  ;  development 
of  economic,  in  the  United  States, 
267 ;  early  appearance  of  economic, 
268, 269  ;  the  School  unable  to  prepare 
for  economic,  269,  270  ;  attainment  of, 
through  play,  388,  389,  392  ;  physical 
culture  the  seed-ground  of,  424. 

Egoism,  altruism  and,  479,  480. 

Egypt,  nature  of  the  temple  and  priest 
in  ancient,  116,  117. 

Election  to  office,  illusion  concerning, 

93.  94- 

Elective  studies,  428,  429. 

Eliot,  Charles  William,  his  More 
Money  for  the  Public  Schools, 
quoted,  44  n.,  97,  203. 

Eliot,  George  (Marian  Evans),  33,  71 ; 

•  her  Romola,  quoted,  469  n.,  471  n.; 
her  Daniel  Deronda,  quoted,  468  n. 

Elizabeth,  Queen  of  England,  33. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  62  ;  his  Society 
and  Solitude,  quoted,  18,  19 ;  his 
Concord  Ode,  quoted,  24  ;  his  Nature, 
quoted,  37  ;  his  Character,  quoted, 
60  n.;  his  Terminus,  quoted,  369  ;  his 
Boston  Hymn,  quoted,  105  n. 

Emotion,  a  mode  of  mind,  495. 

Energetics,  249  n. 

Energy,  physical,  and  psychical  vitality, 
444  ;  excess  of,  445,  447,  447^ 

England,  morality  of,  278. 

Environment,  as  a  bar  to  education,  no. 

Esperanto,  233  n. 

Ethics,  their  relation  to  morals,  58,  59. 


Euripides,  72  ;  his  Phrixas,  quoted,  97. 
Evaluation,   of  studies   and  exercises, 

383-385,  3.86,  393- 
Evans,  Marian.   See  Eliot,  George. 
Evil,    attitude  of  the    educated    man 

toward,  472  ;  necessity  for,  489  ;  law 

of  suggestion  applied  to,  489  n. 
Evolution,  definition  of,  42  n.   See  also 

Development. 
Exercise,  current  notions  regarding,  246. 

Failure,  in  accumulating  property,  75  ; 
in  religion,  75,  76 ;  in  domestic  life, 
76,  77  ;  in  education  and  culture,  77  ; 
in  government,  77;  in  business,  77; 
tests  of,  79. 

Family,  the,  characteristic  motive  of, 
38  ;  secondary  purpose  of,  39  ;  disin- 
tegration of,  43  ;  subordination  of  the 
State  to,  45,  45  n. ;  dependence  of  the 
School  upon,  125,  126;  moral  laws  of, 
288-290 ;  decline  of  family  affection, 
290  ;  persistence  of,  in  the  future,  463. 

Fathers,  rights  of,  435,  436. 

Feelings,  manifestations  of  the,  146. 

F6nelon,  non. 

Fighting,  447,  448.  See  also  War. 

Finance,  principles  of  morality  should 
precede  knowledge  of,  432. 

Finch,  quotation  from,  435. 

Fiske,  John,  adaptation  from  his 
Through  Nature  to  God,  373. 

Food,  205,  205  n. ;  evils  due  to  lack  of 
sufficient,  280,  280  n. ;  adulteration  of, 

3°5- 

Forests,  analogy  between  civilization 
and,  476,  477. 

Fornication,  305. 

France,  morality  of,  378. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  72,  437 ;  his  say- 
ing in  regard  to  war  and  peace,  49  n. 

Free  will,  an  evidence  of,  160  n. 

Freedom,  the  goal  of  man,  23,  24  ;  aca- 
demic, 43 ;  in  endowed,  and  in  State 
universities,  43  n. ;  influence  of,  upon 
economic  activity,  46,  46  n. 

French  Revolution,  a  cause  of,  10. 

FromentSn,  Eugene,  his  old  Masters  of 
Belgium  and  Holland,  quoted,  334. 

Froude,  James  Anthony,  his  Short 
Studies,  quoted,  412. 

Galileo,  58,  72. 

Games,  the  seed-ground  of  morality,  424. 

Genealogies,  paternal,  261. 

Genius,  descendants  of,  91,  91  n.;  the 
duty  of  education  to,  94;  childlike 
qualities  persisting  in,  123  ;  attitude 
of  the  logical  mind  toward,  410. 

Geography,  text-books  of,  167. 

Gibbon,  Edward,  title  and  thesis  of  his 
Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire, 54  n. 


526 


INDEX 


Gilder,  Richard  Watson,  quotation 
from,  350. 

Oilman,  Charlotte  Perkins,  her  Human 
Work,  quoted,  5;n. 

Girls,  private  schools  for,  125  ;  church 
schools  for,  I28n. 

Gladstone,  William  Ewart,  71. 

God,  nature  of,  213,  214. 

Goethe,  Johann  \Volfgang  von,  72 ; 
quoted,  324  n. ;  his  Schiller,  quoted,  8  ; 
his  Torquato  Tasso,  quoted,  201; 
his  Sayings  in  Prose,  quoted,  235  n., 
425,  466  n. ;  the  essential  meaning  of 
his  Faust,  458  n. ;  his  Faust,  quoted, 
464. 

Golden  Rule,  the,  57n. 

Good,  as  antithetical  to  harm,  79 ;  that 
which  promotes  life  is,  325. 

Goodness,  a  matter  of  the  will,  28.  See 
also  Holiness;  Morality. 

Gore,  Rt.  Rev.  Charles,  Bishop  of  Bir- 
mingham, definition  of  the  educated 
man  in  his  Birmingham  Address, 
103  n. 

G6rky,  Mdxim  (pseud,  of  Alexis  Mak- 
simovitch  Pieshkov),  449  n. 

Government,  not  synonymous  with 
State.  35  n. ;  popular  ignorance  of,  77  ; 
doctrine  of  monarchy,  aristocracy 
and  democracy  regarding  three  de- 
partments of,  144  n.;  training  for 
efficiency  in,  259-263;  by  teachers  or 
by  pupils,  263,  264. 

Grammar,  function  of,  237,  239 ;  im- 
portance of,  241 ;  motive  for  study  of, 
401  ;  stage  at  which  this  study  should 
come,  401,  402. 

Great  men,  possibilities  of  human  na- 
ture revealed  by,  8;  the  failures  of, 
274,  275. 

Gregory,  St.,  quotation  from  his  Homi- 
lies, 359. 

Guizot,  54. 

Habits,  the  problem  of,  in  education, 
231;  psychology  of,  231  n.,  232  n.  ; 
instincts  and,  3^8  ;  of  individuals, 
374 ;  of  communities,  374 ;  of  social  in- 
stitutions, 376,  377  ;  form  most  of  life, 
378  ;  of  the  school,  379,  380. 

Hall,  Granville  Stanley,  his  Adolescence, 
quoted,  9  n.,  164. 

Hand,  development  of  the,  61. 

Handwriting,  legible,  a  moral  duty, 
392. 

Hans,  the  educated  German  horse, 
209  n. 

Hanus,  Paul  H.,  his  Modern  School, 
quoted,  97. 

Harmony  of  all  the  powers,  the  object  of 
education,  29,  29  n. 

Harper,  William  R.,  his  Trend  in 
Higher  Education,  quoted,  373. 


Harris,  William  T.,  quotation  from, 
486. 

Hartmann,  Eduard  von,  57,  208  n. 

Health,  its  relation  to  success,  78  ;  some 
disadvantages  of  perfect,  149 ;  its  re- 
lation to  efficiency,  245-247 ;  prosper- 
ity a  condition  of,  246, 246  n. ;  supera- 
bundant, 249  ;  civilization  and,  359- 
364 ;  nature's  efforts  to  restore,  360  ; 
sin  and,  361  ;  labor  and,  362  ;  poverty 
and,  363  ;  evidences  of,  364  ;  partly  a 
matter  of  will,  365  ;  of  work,  365  ;  re- 
lation between  holiness  and,  366-368, 
420,  422  ;  highest  ideal  of  education, 
384  ;  its  place  in  education,  412-416  ; 
an  end  in  itself,  416,418  ;  means  of  se- 
curing, 418  ;  motive  for  seeking,  419; 
art  of,  420  ;  city  life  antagonistic  to, 
421. 

Heredity,  24  n.,  26  n. ;  modifications  of, 
32  ;  weight  of  opinion  regarding,  32; 
cross-functioning  in,  66  ;  a  bar  to  ed- 
ucation, 1 08,  no.  See  also  Charac- 
teristics, acquired ;  Recapitulation 
theory. 

History,  as  edited  for  school  use,  167, 
427,  428, 432  ;  definitions  of,  406,  407  ; 
as  such,  not  the  concern  of  children, 
407,  408,  427 ;  as  literature,  408  ;  mo- 
tive for  the  study  of,  409 ;  superfi- 
ciality of  the  sciences  depending  upon, 
428. 

Hobhouse,  Leonard  T.,  his  Morals  in 
Evolution,  quoted,  442. 

Holiness,  relation  between  health  and, 
366-368,  420,  422 ;  old  age  and,  368  ; 
man's  dream  of,  393. 

Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  his  Chambered 
Nautilus,  quoted,  30. 

Home,  the,  failure  of,  76  ;  result  to 
children  from  loss  of  industrial  ac- 
tivities in,  253;  restoration  of,  255; 
the  true  place  for,  451, 462;  the  func- 
tion of,  462. 

Homer,  his  Iliad,  quoted,  465  n. 

Homestead  land,  332  n. 

Hopkins,  Mark,  19;  quotation  from, 
402. 

Home,  Herman  H.,  his  Philosophy  of 
Education,  quoted,  475. 

Horse,  our  treatment  of  the,  456  n. 

Hours  of  labor,  305. 

Howells,  William  Dean,  on  the  artist, 

33°  "• 
Hughes,  R.  E.,  his  Making  of  Citizens, 

quoted,  164,  196  n.,  424  n. 
Hugo,  Victor,  72. 
Human  nature,  no  complete  science  of, 

1 80. 
Humanities,  subjects  belonging  to  the, 

164. 
Hume,  David,  his  Enquiry  concerning 

Human  Understanding,  quoted,  203  n. 


INDEX 


527 


Hunger,  444. 

Huxley,  Thomas  Henry,  his  On  Evo- 
lution, quoted,  138  ;  his  Lay  Sermons, 
quoted,  465  n. 

Ideals,  the  seven,  of  education  and  cul- 
ture, 367. 

Ideas,  assimilation  of,  86  ;  three  senses 
in  which  the  word  idea  may  be  used, 
87  n.;  attitude  of  society,  education, 
and  culture  toward  new,  88,  89 ; 
power  of,  377  ;  separation  of  men  by 
differences  in,  378,  379  ;  teaching  of 
Plato  regarding,  491,  494. 

Idiom  Neutral,  233  n. 

Ignorance,  its  menace  to  civilization, 
227;  method  of  procedure  to  wisdom 
from,  484. 

Immigrants,  attempts  to  Americanize, 

44- 

Immortality,  7,  7  n. 

Impulse,  motive    expresses    itself    in, 

444- 
Individual,  the,    more    important   than 

Society  or  social  institutions,  7,  38  n.; 

his  claims  against  Society,  283,  284, 

289,  494. 
Individuality,  its  relation  to  personality, 

346. 
Individualization,  causes  of  American, 

266. 

Industrial  revolution,  304,  305. 
Infancy,  prolonging  of,  9. 
Ingersoll,  Robert  G.,  his  Crime  against 

Criminals,  quoted,  70. 
Insane,  educability  of  the,  4. 
Instincts,  and  habits,  358. 
Institutions,  source  of  new,  84.  See  also 

Social  institutions. 
Instruction.   See  Teachers. 
Instructor,  use  of  the  term,  118. 
Intellect,   manifestations    of,     146 ;    a 

mode  of  mind,  495. 
Intelligence,  sense-knowledge  the  basis 

of,  205,  206  ;  attainment  of,  through 

observation,    206,  207,  208,  386-388, 

392  ;  science  the  harvest  of,  392,  424  ; 

play  the  seed-ground  of,  424. 
Intention,  not  to  be  confused  with  pur- 
pose, 444  n. 
Intolerance,  when  a  political  necessity, 

42. 

Intuitions,  122. 
Italy,  morality  of,  278. 

James,  William,  his  Talks  on  Psycho- 
logy and  Life's  Ideals,  quoted,  61. 

Jefferies,  Richard,  his  Pageant  of  Sum- 
mer, quoted,  486. 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  quotation  from, 
469  n.,  471  n. 

Judd,  Charles  H.,  his  Genetic  Psycho- 
logy for  Teachers,  quoted,  466  n. 


Kant,  Immanuel,  57,  62,  71,  144  n.,  355  ; 
quotations  from,  59  n.,  203  n.,  396 ;  fol- 
lowers of,  346. 

Keats,  John,  72. 

Kempis,  Thomas  a,  quotation  from  his 
Imitation  of  Christ,  473  n. 

Kindergarten,  dangers  of  the,  13  ;  func- 
tion of,  387,  392  ;  spirit  of,  should  be 
continued,  388. 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  on  the  artist,  330. 

Knowledge,  growth  of  the  race  in,  63, 
64;  much  has  perished,  63, 64  ;  results 
of  diffusion  of,  140;  three  kinds  of 
use  for  new,  145, 146 ;  unorganized, 
356;  functionings  of,  357,  358. 

Labor,  results  of  unjust  distribution  of 
products  of,  152  n. ;  not  the  source  of 
wealth,  155;  organization  of,  306  ;  con- 
notations of,  365. 

Land,  private  ownership  in,  284-287 ; 
right  of  the  individual  family  to, 
377  "• 

Language,  intellectual  progress  depend- 
ent upon,  208;  deficiencies  of,  210; 
impedes  thought,  212,  213;  condenses 
thought,  213,  214;  mastery  of,  a  con- 
dition of  genius,  214;  failure  to  un- 
derstand, 215,  216  ;  desirability  of  a 
universal,  233,  233  n. ;  four  great 
questions  of,  233-240  ;  advantages  of 
acquiring  a  foreign,  235,  235  n.,  236, 
237,  241,  403,  404;  advantages  of 
written  over  spoken,  238  ;  literature 
and,  the  most  important  tools  in  edu- 
cation, 397-404;  motive  for  the  study 
of,  398  ;  as  a  medium  for  poetry  and 
philosophy,402,403  ;  point  at  which  it 
fails,403 ;  a  constant  in  education, 425. 

Lankester,  Edwin  Ray,  his  Kingdom  of 
Man,  quoted,  464,  479  n. 

Law,  theory  and  administration  of  the, 
27. 

Laymen,  in  control  of  culture,  128  ;  au- 
thority of,  in  educational  matters, 
pernicious,  199,  200 ;  control  of,  a 
factor  in  the  undue  conservatism  of 
the  School,  381 ;  should  not  control 
in  School  or  State,  497. 

Leaders,  analogy  between  educators 
and,  453  n. 

Lee,  Robert  Edward,  73. 

Legislation,  school,  importance  of,  182  ; 
incompetent  or  malicious,  183 :  that 
proposed  for  private  (parochial) 
schools,  184;  embarrassment  of  elab- 
orate, 198. 

Legislators,  qualification  tests  for,  155  ; 
incompetency  of,  in  school  matters, 
183. 

Legislatures,  intention  of,  in  a  demo- 
cracy, 179  ;  the  constitutional  conven- 
tion the  first  form  of,  181. 


528 


INDEX 


Leighton,  Rt.  Rev.  Robert.  Archbishop 
of  Glasgow,  quotation  from,  475. 

Leisure,  schools  for  education  dedicated 
to,  115;  necessary  to  growth  of  the 
mind,  115. 

Leisure  class,  function  of,  11-13,  3^> 
who  should  constitute,  304. 

Life,  an  end  in  itself,  1 74,  488  ;  large- 
ness of,  109;  meaning  of,  491. 

Life  insurance  investigations,  New 
York,  245. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  15,  71 ;  his  Sanga- 
mon  Address,  quoted,  82  ;  his  fail- 
ure to  comprehend  the  world-spirit, 
161 ;  his  course  in  regard  to  slavery, 
224. 

Literacy,  elements  in,  209-218,  232, 
233;  relation  between  efficiency,  mo- 
rality and,  217,  220,  223,  226,  227, 
230,  231  ;  uselessness  of,  and  remedy 
for,  mere  literacy,  221,  222,  228,  229  ; 
action  sometimes  wholly  unaffected 
by,  230  ;  process  of  acquiring,  240, 
241  ;  its  relation  to  observation,  242  ; 
its  relation  to  science,  317. 

Literature,  as  edited  for  school  use, 
167 ;  language  and,  the  most  im- 
portant tools  in  education,  397-404  ; 
motive  for  the  study  of,  398  ;  reason 
for  neglect  of  Oriental,  404. 

Locke,  John,  19. 

Longfellow,  Henry  Wadsworth,  his 
To  Agassiz,  quoted,  326  ;  his  sonnet 
on  Giotto's  Tower,  quoted,  337,  338  ; 
quotation  from,  472  n. 

Lotze,  Rudolph  Hermann,  his  Microcos- 
mus,  quoted,  113,  115,  486,  494. 

Louisiana,  state  centralization  of  edu- 
cation in,  190. 

Lowell,  Tames  Russell,  his  Columbus, 
quoted,  20, 468  n.,  47-5  ;  his  A  Parable, 
quoted,  57n.,  303  ;  his  Present  Crisis, 
quoted,  84  ;  his  Glance  behind  the 
Curtain,  quoted,  121 ;  his  disregard  of 
phonics,  399,  400. 

Luther,  Martin,  71;  quotation  from,  472. 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,  quotation  from,  428. 

Mackenzie,  Rev.  Alexander,  i6on. 

Maecenas,  73. 

Man,  the  anti-civilized,  sins  of,  460, 
460  n.,  461. 

Man,  civilized.    See  Civilization. 

Man,  the  natural,  primary  motives  of, 
443-447,  455;  secondary  motives  of, 
445,  447;  genetic  progress  of,  448 ;  our 
trust  in  the  morals  of,  448  ;  the  future 
of  humanity  determined  by,  449  ;  the 
builder  of  cities,  449,  450  ;  his  resist- 
ance to  culture,  452  ;  follows  the  line 
of  least  resistance,  453. 

Man,  the  well-educated,  his  qualities, 
465-474. 


Mann,  Horace,  quoted,  423 ;  his  Educa- 
tion, quoted,  52. 

Marcus  Aarelius,  quoted,  486. 

Marriage,  best  time  for,  16 ;  civil,  in- 
vented by  the  Family,  45  n.  ;  self- 
alienation  enforced  by,  170;  forbid- 
den to  women  teachers,  170,  183  ; 
often  a  bar  to  men  teachers,  170,  171, 
172. 

Martineau,  James,  his  Ethics  and  Re- 
ligion, quoted,  59  n. ;  his  Essays, 
quoted,  163;  his  Spiritual  Growth, 
quoted,  433. 

Masses,  variants  from  the,  91,  92,  93 ; 
the  task  of  education  among,  93 ;  lim- 
itations of,  93. 

Mathematics,  constitute  pure  science, 
318;  place  of,  in  education.  404  ;  study 
of,  does  not  belong  to  childhood,  405, 
406  ;  motive  for  the  study  of,  406  ;  as 
a  constant  in  education,  427,  427  n. 

Maxwell,  William  H.,  his  Report  to  the 
Board  of  Education,  N.  Y.,  1906, 
109  n.;  his  article  on  Education  for 
Efficiency,  quoted,  115. 

Mazzini,  Joseph, quotation  from,  473  n. 

Mechanics,  seldom   become  criminals, 

'52>  *p3»  J54: 

Mechanism,  mission  of,  113,  358. 

Mediocrity,  tendency  to  revert  to,  92  ; 
educability  of,  212. 

Melancholy,  induced  by  civilization, 
347- 

Mental  phenomena,  classifications  of, 
67  n. 

Mestizos,  educational  attempts  among, 
120,  121 ;  cases  of  superabundant 
health  among,  249  n.;  intellectual  ex- 
tremes among,  427. 

Method,  educational,  depends  upon  the 
purpose  of  education,  394-396  ;  psy- 
chological, the  true,  396 ;  definition  of, 
396;  pseudo- methods,  396,  397. 

Michael  Angelo,  72,  329. 

Middle  classes,  qualities  of,  in  America, 
120. 

Military  service,  no  general  preparation 
for,  in  American  schools,  270,  271. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  54  ;  quotation  from 
his  System  of  Logic  regarding  rela- 
tions of  art  and  science,  412. 

Millais,  Sir  John,  107. 

Milton,    John,  quoted,  138,  423,   468, 

473  n- 

Mind,  conditions  the  body,  245,  246, 248, 
495;  regular  exercise  of,  248  n.;  biolo- 
gical origin  of,  346  n. ;  three  modes  of, 

495- 

Mitchell,  Arthur,  his  Past  in  the  Pre- 
sent, quoted,  54. 

Monarchy,  education  in,  for  efficiency  in 
government,  259,  260. 

Money,  of  restricted  usefulness,  46,  47  ; 


INDEX 


529 


what  one  has  a  right  to  do  for,  306 ; 
decrease  in  purchasing  power  of,  439, 
440. 

Monogamy,  ideals  developed  by,  288. 

Morality,  largely  a  matter  of  the  in- 
tellect, 27,  28 ;  its  gains  over  war 
and  business,  48  ;  social,  55  ;  popular, 
55  ;  historical,  55  ;  national,  36  ;  com- 
parative, 56,  57;  ideal,  57,  58,  59;  its 

.  relation  to  ethics,  58,  59 ;  that  of  the 
community  changes  with  that  of  the 
individual,  88 ;  the  essence  of  civiliza- 
tion, 90;  of  rulers  and  ruled,  119,  120; 
relation  between  literacy,  efficiency, 
and,  217,  218,  223,  226,227,  230,231; 
a  neglected  mode  of  education,  219; 
standards  of,  224-226  ;  decline  of,  a 
menace  to  civilization,  228 ;  social 
machinery  and  qualities  to  promote, 
276,  277  ;  some  evidences  of,  278, 279 ; 
physical  laws  of,  279-282  ;  laws  of,  as 
applied  to  property,  283-288  ;  to  the 
family,  288-290 ;  to  the  church,  290- 
293  ;  to  the  state,  294,  295 ;  to  the 
school,  296-298  ;  to  culture,  298-302 ; 
to  occupation,  302-306 ;  to  the  pror 
fessions,  307;  to  society,  312:  differ- 
ence between  that  of  the  family  and 
that  of  the  school,  389-393;  part  of 
the  will  in,  390,  391 ;  philosophy  the 
harvest  of,  392,  424  ;  games  the  seed- 
ground  of,  424. 

Morgan,  Conway  Lloyd,  his  Habit  and 
Instinct,  quoted,  373. 

Mothers,  proposition  to  pay  salaries  to, 
47,  47  n. ;  seldom  become  criminals, 
152,  153,  154;  support  of  children  by, 
171,  172;  responsibilities  of  teachers 
to,  434,  435- 

Motives,  ideals,  values,  and,  143-145 ; 
primary,  443-447  ;  secondary,  445, 
447  ;  training  of,  445,  446. 

Miinsterberg,  Hugo,  250  n.;  his  The 
Americans,  quoted,  31. 

Museums,  should  furnish  material  for 
all  science  studies  to  city  children,  41 1, 
411  n. 

Music,  importance  of,  in  education,  265  ; 
a  constant  in  education,  426. 

Mystery,  power  of,  40. 

Napoleon  I,  71,  161 ;  his  failure, 
274. 

National  Educational  Association,  Pro- 
ceedings (1905),  quoted,  115. 

Nature,  acquaintance  with,  the  purpose 
of  instruction,  7  ;  lessons  of,  19,  20 ; 
the  search  of  science  for  truth  in,  320, 
321  ;  results  of  this  study  on  human 
economy,  323 ;  on  the  student,  323, 
324  ;  more  than  science,  326  ;  love  of, 
a  late  development,  327  ;  civilization 
is  progress  away  from,  479,  480. 


Nature-study,  value  of,  386,  387 ;  an 
absolute  constant  in  education,  425. 

Negroes,  education  of,  120,  120  n.,  121, 
426 ;  cases  of  superabundant  health 
among,  249  n. ;  possibilities  of,  427  n. 

Neighbor-religion,  57,  208  n. 

New  Commandments,  57 n. 

New  Jersey,  differentiation  of  the  School 
from  the  State  in,  181,  182. 

Newspapers,  public  opinion  manufac- 
tured by,  through  fictions,  i6on. 

Nietzsche,  Friedrich,  ugn.,  149  n.; 
neighbor-religion  ridiculed  by,  57, 
208  n.  ;  .his  theory  regarding  the 
moral  qualities  of  rulers  and  servants, 
non. 

Nutrition,  varying  degrees  of,  in  soul 
and  body,  91  n. 

Observation,  to  acquire  power  of  correct, 
206,  207  ;  its  relation  to  literacy,  242 ; 
its  relation  to  science,  318  ;  the  path- 
way to  intelligence,  386,  387  ;  training 
the  power  of,  in  children,  386,  387. 

Occupations,  variety  of,  practiced  in  this 
country,  267,  268  ;  moral  laws  of,  302- 
306 ;  distinction  between  arts  and, 
302  ;  between  business  and,  307,  308. 

Office-holders,  illusions  concerning,  93, 

94- 

Oklahoma,  Constitution  of,  134  n. 
Old  age,  holiness  and,  368  ;  blessedness 

of,  369 ;  life  in  the  eyes  of,  370. 
Order,  the  badge  of  senility,  410. 
Orderliness,  the  manner  of  education, 

29,  29  n. 
Orient,  its   attitude  toward    efficiency, 

243- 

Oriental  literatures,  reasons  for  neglect 
of,  404. 

O'Shaughnessy,  Arthur,  his  lines  on  the 
power  of  the  poet,  10,  n. 

O'Shea,  M.  V.,  his  Education  as  Adjust- 
ment, quoted,  383. 

Ovid,  quotation  from  his  Metamorpho- 
ses, 359. 

Pain,  progress  due  to,  149,  149  n. 
Painting,  importance  of,  in  education, 

265. 

Parasitism,  economic,  223. 
Parentage,  self-alienation   enforced  by, 

170;  should   be   a   condition   of   all 

teachers,  170,  171,  172. 
Passions,  tyranny  of,  no  n. 
Pathology,  its  importance  to  the  science 

of  education,  147,  148,  149. 
Patriotism,  pseudo  and  real,  51. 
Patten,  Simon  Nelson,  his  New  Basis  of 

Civilization,  quoted,  442. 
Pedagogue,  a  useless  term,  118. 
Pedagogy,  has  much  in'  common  with 

criminology,  50  n. ;  four  questions  in, 


53° 


INDEX 


regarding  studies  and  exercises,  423. 
See  also  Teachers. 

Pennsylvania,  local  autonomy  in  regard 
to  education  in,  190. 

Pericles,  72. 

Periodicity,  of  the  body,  281,  282. 

Personality,  the  School  must  insure 
development  of,  208  ;  its  relation  to 
individuality,  346. 

Phillips,  Wendell,  quotation  from, 
471  n. 

Philosophers,  Plato's  conclusion  regard- 
ing, 95- 

Philosophy,  vulgar,  33,  34,  34  n.;  its 
dependence  upon  biology,  142, 142  n. ; 
its  relation  to  science,  318  ;  its  rela- 
tion to  morality,  341  ;  likened  to  old 
age,  342,  343  ;  purpose  of  a  system  of, 
343 ;  contributions  of  ignorant  men  to, 
343,  344 ;  definitions  of,  344,  345 ;  the 
essence  of,  345,  346  ;  reflects  the  color 
of  the  individual  soul,  346, 347  ;  adds 
neither  knowledge  nor  skill  to  man, 
347, 348  ;  its  adjustment  to  new  truth, 
348  ;  relation  of  individual,  to  histor- 
ical, 348,  349,  35 1 ;  dangers  of,  to  the 
inexperienced,  350 ;  development  of 
historical,  351-354 ;  its  differentiation 
from  science  and  psychology,  352  ; 

!  the  great  questions  of,  354,  355  ;  func- 
tion of,  in  education  and  culture,  356; 
a  mental  quality  or  method,  385, 386  ; 
the  harvest  of  morality,  392, 424  ;  its 
demands  upon  language,  402,  403; 

'  motive  for  studying,  420 ;  its  relation 
to  religion,  420. 

Phonetic  signs  and  sounds,  210,  211. 

Phonics,  one  of  the  great  questions  of 
language,  233-235  :  its  place  in  liter- 
acy, 241 ;  importance  of,  398-400. 

Physical  culture,  its  place  in  education, 
416-419,  422  ;  the  seed-ground  of  effi- 
ciency, 424.  See  also  Exercise  ;  Play. 

Physiology,  its  importance  to  the  sci- 
ence of  education,  147;  the  new, 
206. 

Plato,  I44n.,  352,  353;  his  illustration 
of  the  Cave,  3,  4 ;  his  distinction 
between  art  and  skill  in  the  Gorgias, 
136  n.;  his  failure  to  comprehend  the 
world-spirit,  161;  interpreter  of  So- 
crates, 346 ;  quotation  from,  regarding 
fear  of  death,  486 n.;  his  teaching  re 
garding  ideas,  491,  494. 

Play,  attainment  of  efficiency  through, 
388,  389 ;  an  absolute  constant  in 
education,  424,  424  n. ;  physiological 
necessity  for,  447,  447  n. 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  72. 

Poet,  the  necessity  for,  in  a  great  civiliza- 
tion, 10. 

Poetry,  its  demands  upon  language,  403. 

Political  economy,  its  importance  to  the 


science  of  education,  154 ;  the  true, 
154  ;  the  current,  154. 

Politics,  knowledge  of  science  of  gov- 
ernment should  precede  art  of,  432. 

Pollock,  Sir  Frederick,  his  Science  of 
Politics,  quoted,  31,  52. 

Polyglottisni,  value  ot,  235-237,  403, 
404. 

Pope,  Alexander,  444  n. 

Population,  fundamental  laws  of,  90- 
92  ;  civilization  and,  483. 

Poverty,  destruction  of  causes  of,  38 ; 
ambition  intensified  by,  98 ;  a  bar  to 
education,  108  ;  a  barrier  but  not  a  bar 
to  opportunity,  212;  a  factor  in  the 
undue  conservatism  of  the  School, 

381- 

Power,  progress  of  the  spirit  delayed  by, 
106  ;  the  source  of  wealth,  155. 

Practical  experience,  meaning  and  value 
of,  1 68,  169. 

Pragmatic  philosophy,  58  n. 

Precocity,  two  kinds  of,  410;  treatment 
of,  in  education,  431. 

Presidents,  college,  as  presidents  of 
boards  of  trustees,  128  n. 

Priests,  the  precursors  of  the  Church,  39; 
revelation  proclaimed  by,  40  ;  nature 
of,  in  ancient  Egypt,  116,  117  ;  effect 
of  celibacy  of,  on  scholarly  class,  126, 
127.  See  also  Clergy. 

Professions,  moral  law  of  the,  307. 

Professor,  use  of  the  term,  118. 

Progress,  nature  of,  138,  139. 

Property,  and  wealth,  not  synonymous, 
35,  35  n.;  significance  of,  36,  37,  40; 
strength  of  the  instinct  for,  39;  threats 
of  the  State  to  overthrow,  43  n. ;  sub- 
ordination of  the  State  to,  45,  45  n. ; 
its  relation  to  culture,  46  ;  failure  of 
most  people  to  accumulate,  75 ;  a 
great  servitude,  106;  dependence  of 
the  School  upon,  125;  theory  regard- 
ing holding  of,  by  minors,  250 ;  chil- 
dren should  hold,  251 ;  prescriptions 
of  the  moral  law  regarding,  283-288  ; 
persistence  of,  in  the  future,  463. 

Property-sense,   development  of,    156, 

157,  159- 
Prosperity,  a  condition  of  health,  246, 

246  n. ;  vital  statistics  and,  478, 478  n. 
Prostitution.  See  Social  Evil. 
Protestantism,  children   neglected  by, 

256.  257- 

Psychology,  its  importance  to  the 
science  of  education,  142,  147  ;  phy- 
siological, 147,  147  n. ;  genetic  and 
biogenetic,  147,  148. 

Punctuation,  237,  238. 

Pupil-government,  263,  264. 

Race,  educability  unaffected  by,  62. 
Raphael,  72. 


INDEX 


Reading,  purpose  of,  387,  388.  See  also 
Literature. 

Recapitulation  theory,  24,  25,-  26,  27; 
social  aspect  of,  28. 

Receptivity,  clanger  of  persistency  in, 
116. 

Regeneration,  the  part  of  education 
in,  in,  in  n. 

Regimentation,  should  not  be  required 
of  little  children,  386,  387,  388. 

Reich,  Emil,  his  Success  in  Life,  quoted, 
464. 

Religion,  not  synonymous  with  the 
Church,  35  n.;  our  failure  in,  75,  75  n., 
76,  255,  258  ;  expansion  of,  through 
disintegration  of  the  Church,  255  ; 
moral  laws  of,  290-293  ;  relation  of 
the  Church  to,  290-293 ;  forms  of,  in 
the  United  States,  291 ;  essential 
agreement  between  science  and,  321 ; 
its  relation  to  philosophy,  420 ;  persist- 
ence of,  in  the  future,  463.  See  also 
Church. 

Repetition,  value  of,  in  education,  145  n. 

Reproduction,  general  misconception  of 
functions  of,  among  mammals,  76  n. 

Rights,  of  the  individual,  283-285  ; 
progress  of  society  depends  upon  re- 
duction of,  285. 

Robertson,  Frederick  William,  his  Ser- 
mons, quoted,  70. 

Roman  Catholic  Church,  doubtful  wis- 
dom of  its  attitude  toward  the  clergy, 
33 ;  educational  system  of,  126,  127, 
129  ;  influence  of,  in  politics,  255,  256. 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  his  thesis  as  to 
a  man's  first  duty,  36  n. 

Rousseau,  Jean  Jacques,  19. 

Rulers,  morals  of,  119,  120. 

Ruskin,  John,  his  Munera  Pulveris, 
quoted,  180 ;  his  Sesame  and  Lilies, 
quoted,  215  n. ;  his  Crown  of  Wild 
Olive,  quoted,  383  ;  his  Modern  Paint- 
ers, quoted,  415  ;  his  Seven  Lamps  of 
Architecture,  quoted,  433 ;  his  Unto 
this  Last,  quoted,  497. 

Russia,  a  cause  of  revolution  in,  10  ; 
present  general  conditions  in,  228  n. 

Rustics.   See  Barbarians. 

St.  Louis,  election  of  board  of  education 

in,  135  n. 
Salaries,  of  educators  and  teachers,  134, 

170,  171,  174,  191,  192,  297,  298,  440, 

441. 

San  Francisco  earthquake,  478,  479. 
Savage,  Minot  J.,  his  My  Birth,  quoted, 

in  n. 

Savages,  of  the  city,  456. 
Scholarship,  something  more  than  mere 

literacy,  228,  229  ;  mission  of  Ameri- 

caa,  371. 
School,  the,  aims  of,  primarily  personal, 


35;  result  of  its  alliance  with  the 
State,  43,  44,  44  n.;  its  subordination 
to  tiie  State,  103,  130,  131,  185, 
186;  comparative  cost  of ,  107,436,437; 
its  relation  to  the  university,  116;  its 
dependence  on  other  institutions,  119; 
its  subordination  to  Property,  125  ;  to 
the  Family,  125,  126;  to  the  Church, 
126-128;  symptoms  of  subordination 
of:  its  board  of  education,  131-133; 
its  finances,  134;  symptoms  of  change 
in  this  relation,  134,  135  ;  desiderata 
of  the  ideal,  137  ;  inventions  of,  165  ; 
purpose  of  the  arts  of,  165-167  ;  of 
the  future,  175-179;  differentiation 
of,  from  the  State,  in  New  Jersey, 
181,  182  ;  legislation  for,  182, 183  :  ad- 
ministration of,  183-192  ;  the  school 
system  in  cities,  188,  189 ;  in  states 
and  counties,  188;  tendency  toward 
state  rather  than  municipal  control  of, 
1 89  ;  advantages  of  state  control  of, 
189;  advantages  of  local  autonomy 
to,  189,  190;  national  control  of,  ad- 
vocated, 190, 191  ;  supervision  of,  192 ; 
industrial  training  provided  by,  253, 
254  ;  possible  future  functions  of, 
254 ;  unable  to  prepare  for  eco- 
nomic efficiency,  269, 270  ;  opposition 
of,  to  secret  societies,  272  :  ignores  the 
drama,  272,  273,  moral  laws  of,  296- 
298;  results  of  its  failure  to  prepare 
for  domestic  life,  296,  297  ;  must  be 
controlled  by  educators.  298  ;  conser- 
vatism of,  379-382  ,  adequate  support 
for,  438-441 ;  increasing  demands 
upon,  440  ;  an  institution  continuing 
through  life,  490 ;  considered  as  an 
independent  social  institution,  492, 
493,  497.  See  also  Education. 

School  century,  254  n. 

Schoolhouses,  cost  of  building  and 
equipping.  191,  192. 

Schools,  for  education,  dedicated  to  lei- 
sure, 115;  for  training,  115, 135;  need 
of  new  name  for  training,  116  :  train- 
ing, in  the  university,  117;  endowed 
and  private,  125,  126;  church,  126- 
128, 128  n.;  constitution  and  power  of 
boards  of  education  in  American  pub- 
lic, 131  ;  parochial,  freedom  of ,  from 
state  control,  183  ;  proposed  interfer- 
ences with,  183,  184  ;  national  appro- 
priations for  normal,  190  n.;  mischief 
done  in  grammar  and  high,  216  ;  col- 
lege-trained teachers  in  grammar, 
216  n.  ;  scientific  and  technical,  267; 
need  for  more  special,  490. 

Schopenhauer,  Arthur,  57,  144  n., 
208  n. 

Science,  its  mediation  between  spirit 
and  mechanism,  113;  its  relation 
to  art,  141,412,  413;  subjects  belong- 


532 


INDEX 


ing  to,  164 ;  its  relation  to  literacy, 
317;  to  philosophy,  318,  325  ;  to  ob- 
servation, 318;  its  method  of  proce- 
dure, 318,325  ;  its  essential  agreement 
with  religion,  321 ;  vastness  of  the 
field  of,  329,  330  ;  entrenching  of  one, 
upon  another,  331,  332;  the  duty  of 
society  toward,  335,  336;  training  for 
women  in,  336  ;  a  mental  quality  or 
method,  385, 386  ;  the  harvest  of  intel- 
ligence, 392,  424  ;  as  such,  not  suited 
to  children,  409, 410  ;  materials  of,  be- 
long to  the  child,  410, 41 1 ;  motive  for 
study  of,  412;  classification  of,  413; 
higher  values  of,  416  ;  limitations  of, 
417,418. 

Scientific  method,  fields  invaded  by, 31 7, 
318. 

Secret  societies,  in  China  and  America, 
271;  opposition  to,  in  American 
schools,  272. 

Seelye,  Julius  H.,  160  n. 

Self-abnegation,  inculcated  by  the 
Church,  39,  40. 

Self -alienation,  168,  169;  marriage  and 
parentage  enforce,  170. 

Self-consciousness,  158,  158  n. 

Self-control,  the  apotheosis  of  will,  392. 

Self-direction,  158,  161. 

Self-made  men,  15,  168. 

Self-realization,  the  characteristic  mo- 
tive of  Property,  36,  40. 

Self-sacrifice,  the  characteristic  motive 
of  the  Family,  38. 

Self-surrender,  the  rewards  of,  41. 

Seminary,  meaning  of  the  word,  116. 

Sense,  knowledge  of,  the  second  stage 
in  psychical  development,  1 59 ; 
temptations  of,  159,  160. 

Senses,  the,  all  knowledge  derived  from, 
203,  203  n.  ;  popular  ignorance  con- 
cerning, 204,  205 ;  the  multitude  of, 
205,  205  n.;  training  of,  the  basis  of 
intelligence,  206,  207,  208. 

Servants,  morals  of,  119,  120. 

Sex,  educability  unaffected  by,  62 ; 
problems  of,  206 n.;  single  moral 
standard  demanded  in  matters  of,  289. 

Shakespeare,  72,  415;  his  Romeo  and 
Juliet,  quoted,  400  n. ;  his  Henry  V., 
quoted,  472  n. 

Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  73  ;  his  Adonais, 
quoted,  6  n. ;  his  Sensitive  Plant, 
quoted,  473  n. 

Sin,  its  relation  to  crime,  150;  com- 
mitted only  by  the  imperfectly  edu- 
cated, 150,  151  ;  absurd  evaluations 
and  punishments  of,  152  ;  nature  of 
great  sins,  152,  153,  153  n.;  most 
dreadful  forms  of,  160,  161. 

Skill,  Plato's  distinction  beween  art 
and,  136  n. 

Slander.    See  Calumny. 


Slavery,  Lincoln's  course  in  regard  to, 
224. 

Sleep,  a  moral  duty,  280,  281. 

Social  control,  158,  161. 

Social  evil,  289. 

Social  institutions,  the  eight  great,  31  ; 
largeness  of  life  dependent  upon 
identification  with,  31,  34;  four  of 
these,  primarily  personal,  34 ;  servants 
attaching  to  these,  34,  35  ;  profes- 
sions attaching  to  the  others,  35  ; 
dependent  upon  Business  or  Property 
for  revenue,  42  ;  habits  of,  376,  376  n.t 
377,  380  ;  incompleteness  of,  377  n. ; 
duty  of  the  educated  man  to,  472,  473. 

Socialism,  State,  44. 

Society,  the  individual  paramount  to,  7  ; 
its  endeavor  to  protect  the  child,  9  ; 
contact  with,  a  necessary  part  of 
education,  17-20,  84  n.,  85  ;  new  in- 
stitutions developed  by,  84  ;  motives 
of,  in  organizing  education,  97,  98 ; 
its  duty  to  the  individual,  283,  284, 
289,  494  ;  moral  laws  of,  312  ;  its  re- 
lation to  the  educator,  433. 

Sociology,  importance  of,  in  the  science 
of  education,  142. 

Socrates,  16,  27,  58  n.,  73, 141, 162,  352, 
353  ;  his  failure  to  comprehend  the 
world-spirit,  161  ;  as  interpreted  by 
Plato,  346. 

Solitude,  a  necessary  factor  in  educa- 
tion, 17-20. 

Solomon,  72. 

Sophocles,  72. 

Soul,  education  of  the,  5,  6,  6  n.,  8,  9 ; 
sins  of  the,  160,  161. 

Spanish-American  War,  how  it  might 
have  been  averted,  49  n. 

Specialization,  of  social  functions, 
tendency  toward,  44. 

Speech,  a  sentence  is  a,  237 ;  parts  of, 
238. 

Spelling,  function  of,  233  ;  a  moral  duty, 
392. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  failure  of  his  philo- 
sophy as  a  science  of  sciences,  329 ; 
his  definition  of  desire.  336  n. ;  his 
First  Principles  of  Synthetic  Philoso- 
phy, quoted,  433;  his  conviction  re- 
garding universal  decay,  454  n.,  455  n. 

Spenser,  Edmund,  his  Hymn  in  Honor 
of  Beauty,  quoted,  359. 

Spirit.   See  Soul. 

Starvation,  unknown  among   savages, 

377"- 

State,  the,  its  usurpation  of  functions, 
35)  36,  36  n.,  42,  44,  48;  personal 
legislation  by,  vicious,  35  ;  not  syn- 
onymous with  Government,  35  n.;  its 
double  function,  41.  42  ;  its  conspicu- 
ous weaknesses,  42  ;  its  sources  of 
revenue,  42,  43 ;  its  struggle  with 


INDEX 


533 


Business  for  control  of  society,  43  ; 
result  of  its  alliance  with  the  School, 
43,  44,  44  n.  ;  its  subordination  to 
other  institutions,  44, 45,45  n.;  dictates 
of  Property  and  the  Church  to,  45  n. ; 
the  School  controlled  by,  103,  130- 
134, 185, 186  ;  character  of  the  modern 
American,  130,  131 ;  differentiation 
of  the  School  from,  in  New  Jersey, 
181,  182;  the  paramount  social  in- 
stitution, 293,  295;  Burke's  theory  re- 
garding, 293,  294  ;  moral  laws  of,  294, 
295  ;  its  regulation  of  wages,  303. 

Stephen,  Sir  Leslie,  his  History  of  Eng- 
lish Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury, quoted,  376  n.,  464  n.,  482  n. 

Sterling,  John,  402  n. 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  444  n. 

Stirner,  Max,  his  The  Ego  and  His  Own, 
quoted,  2i8n. 

Stoicism,  352. 

Story,  William  Wetmore,  his  lo  Victis, 
105  n. 

Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher,  33. 

Studies  and  exercises,  evaluation  of, 
383-385,  386,  393  ;  four  questions  re- 
garding, in  pedagogy,  423  ;  constants 
in,  424-428  ;  elective,  428,  429  ;  group- 
ing  of,  under  humanities,  sciences, 
and  arts,  429 ;  true  order  of,  429 ; 
proper  age  for  particular,  429. 

Success,  a  matter  of  standards  and  defi- 
nitions, 70 ;  not  always  a  matter  of 
general  accomplishment,  71 ;  compat- 
ible -witli  personal  immorality,  72, 
73 ;  not  always  a  matter  of  contem- 
porary recognition,  72 ;  seldom  evi- 
denced by  property,  73  ;  fame  no  proof 
of,  73 ;  tests  of,  74,  75,  78,  79 ;  de- 
pendent upon  goodness,  79  ;  of  edu- 
cated men,  104,  104  n.,  470. 

Suffrage,  denied  to  women,  258 ;  argu- 
ment for  equal,  262,  262  n. 

Superintendent  of  schools,  legislation 
regarding,  183;  functions  of,  187, 
1 88  ;  disadvantages  of  many  county, 
198;  relation  of,  to  boards  of  educa- 
tion, 198,  199.  See  also  Educators. 

Superstitions,  319,  320. 

Supervision,  school,  necessity  for,  193, 
194  ;  dangers  from  incompetent,  195  ; 
disadvantages  of  elaborate  system  of, 
1 08. 

Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles,  his  Songs 
before  Sunrise,  quoted,  313,  399. 

Sympathy,  development  of  social,  478, 
479- 

Talent,  native  and  educated,  92,  92  n. ; 
popular  notion  concerning,  105  ;  recog- 
nizable early  in  life,  -584. 

Talents,  parable  of  the,  80  n. 

Tarde,  George,  classification  of  mental 


phenomena   by,  in  his  Social  Laws, 
07  n. 
Tariff,  protective,  a  bribe  to  business, 

43  n-.  45  n- 

Taxes,  confiscatory  nature  of,  43  n. 

Taxpayers,  rights  of,  against  teachers, 
436 ;  attitude  of,  toward  school  appro- 
priations, 438. 

Taylor,  Jeremy,  on  the  ills  of  life,  347  ; 
his  Holy  Living,  quoted,  469  n. 

Teachers,  reasons  for  growing  require- 
ments of,  10  :  number  of,  in  America, 
1 08  ;  use  of  the  term,  118  ;  effect  of 
boards  of  education  on,  132  ;  salaries 
of,  134,  170,  171,  174,  191,  192,  297, 
298,  441  ;  education  of  the  typical, 
169 ;  their  misdirected  efforts,  169, 
170 ;  celibacy  prescribed  for  women, 
1 70, 1 83 ;  objections  to  married  women 
as,  171-173;  natural,  194;  function 
of,  195,  196;  dangers  of  incompetent, 
195-197  ;  college  trained,  in  grammar 
schools,  216  n. ;  training  of,  216  ;  need 
of  efficiency  in,  222 ;  government  by, 
263,  264  ;  persistence  of  men  of  aver- 
age ability  among,  381 ;  obligations 
of,  to  the  child,  433,  434  ;  to  the  mo- 
ther of  the,  child,  434,  435  ;  to  the 
taxpayer,  436  ;  to  their  own  teachers, 
437  ;  to  the  social  institutions,  437 ; 
need  of  increased  number  of,  441. 

Teaching,  its  relation  to  education,  52. 

Temperature-appetite,  445. 

Temple,  nature  of,  in  ancient  Egypt, 
116,  117. 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  quotation  from,  4  5  8  n ., 
472 ;  his  Locksley  Hall  Sixty  Years 
after,  quoted,  17  ;  his  In  Memoriam, 
quoted,  51,  109  ;  his  Princess,  quoted, 

213- 

Testimony,     "hearsay,"    rejected    in 

English  and  American  courts  of  law, 

240. 
Text-books,  editing  of,   167  ;  factor  in 

conservatism  of  the  School,  380. 
Theatre,  fascination  of,  for  the  young, 

273,  273  n.    See  also  Drama. 
Therapeutics,  new  system  of,  206  n. 
Thirlwall,  Connop,  his  Remains,  quoted, 

64. 
Thwing,    Charles   F.,    his   History   of 

Higher     Education      in      America, 

quoted,  iT6n.,  371. 
Titchener,  Edward  B.,  his  Experimental 

Psychology,  quoted,  138. 
Toleration,  religious,  in  America,  45  n. 
Tolstoi,  quotation  from,  37. 
Trades.  See  Occupations. 
Tradition,  education  has  followed  the 

lines  of,  168. 

Transportation  of  goods,  309. 
Trust-estates,  victims  of,  250,  251. 
Truth,  the   price  of  freedom,   23,  24 ; 


534 


INDEX 


a  matter  of  the  intellect,  28,  29 ; 
new,  comes  through  individuals,  57, 
58,  83  ;  the  goal  of  education,  121, 
122,  124;  encouragement  of,  in  the 
child,  207  ;  business  of  culture  and 
education  regarding,  226 ;  science  a 
isearch  for,  318-321;  history  of  the 
publication  of  new,  380  ;  advantages 
of  controversy  concerning  new,  380. 

Tsi  An,  Empress  of  China,  243. 

Tufts,  James  Hayden,  quotation  from, 
483  n. 

United  States,  individualization  in, 
266 ;  economic  efficiency  in,  267 ; 
early  appearance  of  this  efficiency  in, 
268,  269 ;  no  general  preparation  for 
military  service  in  schools  of,  270, 
271. 

Universities,  advocacy  of  national,  190. 

University,  academic  freedom  in  the 
endowed  and  in  the  state,  43  n. ;  pur- 
pose of,  1 1 6,  n6n.,  117;  imperfect 
control  of,  by  culture,  128,  129.  See 
also  College. 

Values,    false    perspective    regarding 

ethical,  72  n. 
Variability,  progress  through,  24,  66 ; 

typical  instances  of,  99,  100. 
Variants,  from  the  masses,  91,  92,  93, 

127,  135- 
Viciousness,    evidence    of    incomplete 

education,  175,  176. 
Victoria,  Queen  of  England,  33. 
Village,  the  place  for  habitation,  462, 

463- 

Virgil,  73. 
Vital    statistics,   prosperity    and,  478, 

478  n. 
Vitality,  psychical,  and  physical  energy, 

444. 

Volapiik,  233  n. 
Voltaire,  72. 
Vries,  Hugo  de,  354. 

Wages,  right  of  the  State  to  regulate, 

3°3- 

War,  defensive  and  offensive,  41,  42, 
49 n.;  morality  gaining  upon,  48: 
evidences  that  it  will  cease,  49 ;  ad- 
missible precautions  against,  49  n.; 
no  war  righteous  upon  both  sides, 
49  n. ;  evil  features  and  influences  of. 
49-51  ;  some  good  results  of,  51 ;  pre- 
paration and  training  for,  270,  271. 

Ward,  Lester  Frank,  his  Psychic  Fac- 
torst of  Civilization,  quoted,  i;2ii., 
i8on.,  334  n.,  453  n. ;  his  Applied  So- 
ciology, quoted,  423. 


Washington,  George,  71,  161,  444  n. 

Wealth,  not  synonymous  with  property, 
35,  35  n. ;  product  not  of  labor  but  of 
power,  155  ;  decrease  of,  a  menace  to 
civilization,  227,  228. 

Weber,  Alfred,  his  History  of  Philo- 
sophy, quoted,  355. 

Webster,  Daniel,  62,  71 ;  his  Speech  at 
Plymouth  (1820),  quoted,  42  n. ;  quo- 
tation from  his  second  Bunker  Hill 
oration,  373. 

Weininger,  Otto,  neighbor-philosophy 
reviled  by,  208  n. 

White,  Andrew  Dickson,  his  Autobio- 
graphy, quoted,  I2gn. 

Whitman,  Walt,  72;  his  Brooklyn 
Ferry,  quoted,  102  ;  his  Song  of  My- 
self, quoted,  322 ;  his  Leaves  of  Grass, 
quoted,  474  n. 

Wife-beating,  285. 

Will,  manifestations  of  the,  146 ;  sig- 
nificance of  weakness  of,  219;  de- 
velopment and  strengthening  of,  389 ; 
a  mode  of  mind,  495. 

William,  Emperor  of  Germany,  250  n. 

William  the  Conqueror,  249. 

Wisdom,  relative  to  tasks  and  opportu- 
nities, 384 ;  the  apotheosis  of  intel- 
lect, 392  ;  method  of  procedure  from 
ignorance  to,  484. 

Woman,  position  of,  in  historical  civili- 
zation, 31  ;  progress  of,  advantageous 
to  humanity,  32,  33;  vulgar  philo- 
sophy regarding.  33  ;  modern  legis- 
lation in  behalf  of,  38  n. ;  employment 
of,  in  the  public  schools,  1 34,  1 74 ; 
celibacy  imposed  upon,  as  teachers, 
170,  183;  without  political  influence 
in  America,  258  ;  result  of  their  dis- 
franchisement,  260,  261  ;  no  training 
for  citizenship  given  to,  261  ;  argu- 
ment for  suffrage  for,  262,  262  n. ; 
American,  less  efficient  than  man, 
266 ;  difficulties  in  the  way  of  scien- 
tific or  artistic  training  for,  336 ; 
effect  of  conservatism  of,  upon  the 
School,  380 ;  economic  freedom  of, 
483. 

Words,  choice  of,  400;  fitness  of, 
401. 

Wordsworth,  William,  his  Poems  writ- 
ten in  Youth,  quoted,  17;  his  Mis- 
cellaneous Sonnets,  quoted,  18 ;  his 
Ode  to  Duty,  quoted,  59  n. ;  his  Inti- 
mations of  Immortality,  quoted,  So  ; 
his  Tintern  Abbey,  quoted,  321,  322. 

Working  class,  who  should  constitute, 

3°4- 

World-spirit,  comprehension  of,  161 ; 
Christ's  understanding  of,  162. 


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